I went to a concert with 80k people. It was terrible, the band only played music for me for 90 milliseconds.
its not 1 teacher for 7 hours, its 7 teachers for 7 hours of barely passable teaching content.
I know homeschool families, and none of their kids went to college. They work at PetCo, construction, and seek drugs
He can’t do the English either, judging by his comma splice.
The only homeschooled person I know works at Google
The only homeschooled person I know just got roped into an MLM scheme.
Technically a home school teacher is a “teacher” but too many times that’s quite a stretch
I don’t think having no classmates and a teacher without an education in pedagogy accelerates your learning speed by a factor of 2.333
4 kids, 1 overworked and unqualified-to-teach stay at home mom, 3 hours.
“Teacher” seems to be a flexible term here.
There’s a big difference between someone who’s studied and practiced teaching a given subject and explaining it in a way that kids will understand, and a parent who knows only what they have read in the textbook.
And in a school, it’s not “1 teacher” - a kid will have a team of teachers, each with their own speciality. I think my English teacher would have done a pretty dodgy job if she’d had to teach us chemistry or biology.
My mother/teacher was a product of our public school system and I have no idea how good of a student she was, but it didn’t matter because she had this amazing Christ-inspired curriculum that did all the work for her.
I’m not sure how typical my experience was, but for my mom, she was more drawn to the philosophical idea of home schooling and controlling what your children learn than the actual learning work.
In my family, we had bible together in the morning, and then broke to our separate rooms to work on math, social studies, science, etc.
A few things to note:
- Nobody but my mom checked our work - there was no equivalence or state testing. I mean I’m sure there was in our state but we didn’t participate
- My mom isn’t very smart and really didn’t have the energy to hound us to do our work anyway. We would get yelled at for not doing our assignments but again, more for the fact of disobeying here - the education itself wasn’t really important
- Pretty much our entire curriculum was Abeka, which is a garbage curriculum designed to substitute Christianity for actual learning
It won’t surprise you to learn that neither me nor any of my siblings went to college.
When I got my first real job, I was very gently informed that the “diploma” I had presented, which my dad had printed out of an MS word template, was not a valid document. Subsequently I had to quickly get a GED - which was the first and only time I’ve ever had any kind of sense of my actual education level compared to any kind of standard.
I still don’t have a confident answer to what Algebra is. At one point not long ago, I was putting together a somewhat complex formula in Excel and I wondered to myself, is this algebra?
I still genuinely don’t know, in case anyone wants to elucidate.
Simplest way you do algebra - item costs $5, you give the cashier $10, how much do you get back?
I’m sorry to hear about your upbringing. It must have been tough to adjust to adulthood.
Algebra is doing maths with unknown values. Things like 3 x A = 6 Where A is “something we dont know yet” - so “3 times something is 6”
In this case I think perhaps we can see that A should be 2, but we can steadily learn techniques to solve more and more complicated puzzles like this.
If you get really good at these sorts of puzzles, you can learn to turn a lot of real world problem into this sort of puzzle, and often you can learn things about the problem by looking at the maths.
We can use this to calculate all sorts of stuff, and its a base of a lot of maths that comes later which is used for basically all science, engineering, accounting, programming etc.
Without getting into the abstract definition, algebra is basically just arithmetic (“regular math”) using variables (like “x”) to represent unknown values. Typically you’re trying to find a value (a regular number) or an expression (a relationship between values and variables) equal to your variable.
When you “solve for x”, you’re doing algebra. If your Excel formulas reference cells as variables (e.g. “=A1*3”) then yes that is algebra, since the cell can take different values.
Okay yeah that’s what I was thinking - particularly the cell reference as variable. Thank you for a great explanation.
I literally worked in finance for a major company for a period of time…
Thanks for sharing! This was essentially my experience growing up, I am old now and never bounced back fully in math either.
I was the oldest of 8, so much of my time was helping my siblings with schoolwork on top of my own “self learning” Problem is most of our family is nerodivergent, undiagnosed until adulthood… So you know none of us got the help we needed either. Another flaw in homeschooling as you dont have people trained to pick up dyslexia early, so kids struggle too much.
Your comment helped me feel that someone out there understands, thanks! :)
For me the most devastating part of homeschooling was the lack of opportunity to interact with peers and learn basic social skills/norms/etc.
I’ve been an adult over a decade now and to this day I haven’t made up for those formative years of cognitive/social development. I likely never can because the neuroplasticity of a 30+ y.o. is wayy different from that of a single-digit’s. But also because I was always “weird,” I never made friends, so I never got to practice the social skills that I missed, and was never able to catch up in any meaningful way, so the cycles of isolation compound on themselves.
I’m completely dysfunctional and maladapted as an adult, and since everyone blames me personally for my shortcomings, I’ve found it easiest to retreat even further into isolation. At this point I’m basically a shut-in. I used to try really hard “push through” and be a part of society, as if effort alone would ever be enough. I tried persevering in the face of ridicule, but ultimately my efforts only ever got me ridiculed and derided even harder.
At this point I’ve accepted my bitter fate, and strangely over the past year I’ve found a sense of peace like I’ve never known before. I’m still isolated, maladapted, and dysfunctional, but I’ve finally learned to be okay with that. Not that I would recommend this to anybody, but if there had been literally any other option available to me, I would have chosen that instead.
Literally nobody understands that they didn’t get their social intuition from birth, and that people don’t just magically come pre-packaged with that. So they think it’s absurd when I claim I don’t have that/don’t understand it. So they blame me when I don’t “just get it” when “it” seems so obvious to every “normal” person, apparently.
My twenties were a living hell. Even now I’m dead inside. The peace I feel now is the peace of the grave, and I resisted it every step of the way.
Folks, if you don’t hate your children, then say no to homeschooling.
I’m a college professor and I’m not going to go around pretending to teach anything that isn’t related to my actual field.
Public School: A qualified teacher with proven subject matter knowledge who is accountable, a curated curriculum designed by teaching and subject matter experts, as well as a meaningful diploma which actually lets colleges/employers understand roughly what you were taught and how you performed
Homeschooling: some random mom, with some random level, including potentially none at all, of qualifications and subject matter knowledge, and little to no curriculum supervision, and resulting in zero credible or meaningful certification
You do the math
Both of my parents are teachers. There were several years in the late 90s and early 2000s where I was home schooled and I did fine because they were teachers.
But I knew so many other kids who did what my parents called “unschooling” where they just did nothing. Their parents were not homeschooling because they were passionate about personally giving their kids a good education, they just didn’t like public school, usually for racist or religious reasons, and couldn’t afford private school.
So they ended up being essentially latchkey kids who didn’t leave the house, and education was a choose your own adventure. Lots of the homeschool kids I knew had no social skills and struggled to read, write, and they couldn’t do math.
All that to say, that 1:1 attention isn’t worth much usually.
and I knew people that were unschooled that knew three second languages from exposure and got a 4 on the ap calculus test. not all people should be homeschooled and not all parents should homeschool, but some will do it well.
The reality is 9 times out of ten not only is there no actual teacher. But the kid is actively being misinformed…
I wonder if the people that want to home school their kids are actually taking into account the fact that for younger children, education requires the weight of social conformity in order to take.
Seven-year-olds don’t want to learn their times tables. They want to play. They want to do the fun, easy shit.
But education is weightlifting for your mind. It’s hard, it’s difficult, it’s painful, and it requires that the person being educated put the effort in.
If there’s nobody there to make them put the effort in when they don’t know how to put the effort in, then they’re never going to learn how to put the effort in.
My buddy home schools their 3 kids. Him and his wife are both solo practice consultants/contractors so they’ll sign on for a project and work 80 hour weeks for 2-3 months, then take a few months off. They alternate their work load and teaching their kids. They also love to travel, so it works for them.
They’re very mindful of the social interactions tho. They do all the “core” learning in 2 days a week. And spend 3 doing social/extra curricular things. Cooking classes, gymnastics, soccer, gardening, art, music, what ever.
They’re very much not a sterotypical “home school” family. My kids play with their kids about once a week and (i know im biased) but youd never guess his kids were home schooled if you just interacted with them.
Ages 8, 6, and 5
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am all for non-traditional education, but I also know that each person learns different things at a different rate, and there’s also a social component to attending school with people and seeing them on a regular basis that is incredibly difficult to recreate with homeschooling.
Like if I have my druthers, I will probably at the very least put my kids into a Montessori should I get to have any.
But it depends on their temperament.
I was a very motivated self learner. I read multiple encyclopedias, I would read our schoolbooks before the school year even started. So I never really had to put any effort in because I already knew all of the information and classes simply served as a refresher to help the information set in.
If my theoretical future child is similar, then a Montessori would be great for them because it would create an environment that would help them learn the information they are interested in learning while they’re interested in learning it instead of forcing them to go at the pace of a public school.
But the only way I would homeschool would be if I, I don’t know, won the lottery or something and had the time and inclination to ensure that my child had every single advantage affordable to them, afforded to them.
Good old mythical man-hour
Its like saying, if we put 9 women together we can make a baby in a month
A good tutor could probably manage to teach what a kid learns in 7 hours of public school in 3 hours to a single student to be fair. But 3 tutors couldn’t teach a single student in 1 hour
I am a homeroom teacher in a primary school (private school, not in the US). Homeroom teachers at my school have 4 hours a day with our students. In the lower grades, we teach “core subjects” (math, reading, writing, science and social studies) in three of those four hours, and the other hour is social-emotional team building and language activities (speaking/listening and some phonics). In the upper grades each teacher is in charge of teaching one subject for the whole grade level, so I teach math for three hours and then I have the social-emotional/language hour with my homeroom class.
The other hours of the day are what some schools call “related arts” or “special area” classes – music, art, PE, etc. Our students also have a 30-minute lunch break and 70 minutes of recess time over the course of the day.
We follow US curriculum for the core academic subjects.
I absolutely believe that students can get through “what a kid learns in 7 hours of public school” in 3 hours of homeschool. School is designed to fill most of a work day so parents can work a full day, not because we have that much academic content to cover.
But I also know kids can miss out on some really important academic rigor (especially in math and science), socialization, and/or exposure to arts if their parents aren’t well-informed in their approach to homeschool.
Homeschooling isn’t for everyone but it should be an option. Even self study should be an option, I learned plenty on my own and going to classes was a waste my time. I’ll write this, there’s stuff that’s great in person but then there’s the why am I here classes. I moved a lot so the socialization aspect was developed differently for me so it’s not like that held any value.
I’m very critical of the education system because I worked in education. When you’re young, people have a lot more motivation to learn but it’s hindered by a snail paced cookie cutter education program.
Schools are a very important institutions for more than just teaching algebra and grammar. It brings kids together with other kids forming their social environment, challenges them with different views and ideas than their parents’ and so much more. While that didn’t work out for you personally, most children don’t move a lot so they have a real opportunity for socialization. Addionally it’s an important layer of child protection: at school teachers and other guardians have a great opportunity to spot signs of child abuse.
I do think though that hybrid models with partly homeschooling, partly regular schooling could be a viable option, especially for older students.
I get you have good intent with your post and my response isn’t directed at you, just clarifying that reality is much different.
“It brings kids together with other kids forming their social environment, challenges them with different views and ideas than their parents’ and so much more.”
Because one student making “r’etard” noises at my IEP student totally brought them together, they were all laughing well except my student shut down. Even the main class teacher in the class didn’t want to get in on doing anything about it. The behavioral specialist and I grilled that kid on what he did. Or another student came to me for help because another student touched her in her private place. She totally got to learn that other students have different views and ideas. It’s also important to experience being bullied for things out of you control as well; it just helps you learn the world has different views.
Or how about when I went to school and my friend was told vinegar–with a drawn out pronunciation–to his face and no one did anything, sure helped him out. Or when another friend had -a* racial slur referring to Asian people*- keyed on her car, she experienced the different views and ideas that other people have.
“While that didn’t work out for you personally, most children don’t move a lot so they have a real opportunity for socialization.”
The paradox of that is it was the opposite, I became very good at making friends and socializing. I have friends in many state and many other countries. Most students didn’t care to socialize much when I was working in education, it was tablet or computer time after 3/4 grade.
“Additionally it’s an important layer of child protection”
I did file my fair share of CPS reports.
But sadly, it could be the opposite and it happens more often than the news shows; odds are anyone that ends up on the news was the result of a failed blackmail attempt. Sex with teachers happens way more than you think, voluntary or not. Anecdotally, I had a student that added me on bookface the day of her graduation. I nope’d out of that so fast.
Then take in the other examples I made, an there’s a whole lot more. Like it or not, by High School or earlier, school was all about sex, drugs, alcohol, or worse. I mean, now they have vapes but when I went to school people would smoke in bathrooms, trip on acid in class, even do dip in class… in front of the teacher. I went to a very posh school in the most expensive area of the state; everyone had a car. I had three, a Volvo for winter, the Mercedes that was my first car, and a Jaguar to change things up. The school had a cocaine problem not a cheap drug problem. That’s what happens when you go to a rich kids school.
Don’t even get me started on my little sister’s time in school. And I phrase it that way akin to spending time in prison.
I think what you say sounds good on paper and I’d like to believe it.
And as a bonus, odds are pretty much every teacher drinks after school; it was the easiest conversation starter in the teachers lounge. I tried my attempt to make a change and threw in the towel on this so called dumpster fire of an education system we have. It’s like do they put up a gated fence to protect the children or keep in the inmates?
or… do both? You can homeschool/self-study till you’re blue in the face, but you won’t get the socializing nor the exposure; there’s tons you’d “ignore”/“neglect” by yourself or homeschooled.
Homeschool is for morons who think “liberal education” is a tool of the devil or some bullshit, and yes, some are racist and “how dare my kid learn with that cripple or child of color.”
I went to school and hated every minute of it; this wasn’t summer fun of hanging out with friends on your street. I made sure to go to school the least amount possible. I would take all the sick days. When I was 16, I did part of the day in vocational school… for multi-media, as in photoshop, video editing, etc. That was great because I already knew everything going into the program so I played super smash brothers on an emulator after getting the assignments done. So that also cut down the amount of classes to 3 classes a day at high school, which was great.
School was fun for woodworking, metal working, home-ec, and engine class; the rest of it I would sleep through. Socializing in school was negligible, if you’re always told to be quiet and you maybe socialize during lunch and brief moments, what’s the point? Getting sick because someone brought in the latest strain? I had more fun socializing on a 40 man raid playing wow.
Homeschool is for morons who think “liberal education” is a tool of the devil or some bullshit, and yes, some are racist and “how dare my kid learn with that cripple or child of color.”
I don’t think that way, I think school is just garbage and a waste of time. Really I should have done the early college program combined with the vocational school so I would have made better use of my time.
Like I mentioned, before in other posts that the education system needs an overhaul and everyone should have individualized education programs. Once you work in a school, you understand how useless it really has become; kids today do not get the same education I did.
The only reason I got up to go to school was to watch Pokemon and Digimon while drinking my green tea. Then, think how stupid it is for me to be up this early only to go sleep in class. Oh yeah, I had a A average for pretty much all my classes cause I was bribed getting a skateboard for getting straight A’s. Some schools I went to growing up, it was daycare with a good lunch if you had money–as in one school had slushies, German pretzels with cheese, burgers, fries, pizza, ice cream, the menu of the day, etc. It was like going to a buffet.
I can say that school isn’t for everyone in the same manner as homeschool isn’t for everyone either.
Eh, as someone who was homeschooled, there are some legitimate reasons and legitimate ways to approach homeschooling.
I do think regulations regarding homeschooling need to be far more stringent across the board to ensure that all children are receiving a decent education and that they are being properly socialized.
