Not surprising that the kid of two extremely successful and intelligent parents -- at least technically and academically -- is suffocated by the pacing of public schooling. It's supposed to accommodate the needs of the general population and its standard deviations of nurture and nature. I wonder if this will become a more common pattern for the cognitive elite.
Homeschooling is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd be more worried about lack of socialization with other children or any kind of group learning. Even more so if the child is slightly introverted.<p>This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships other than a school?
I learned pretty much everything I know from reading by myself since I lived out in the country. My parents did my homework with their left hand when I was young so I'd have time for more productive pursuits like exploring or reading. Worked pretty well for me. I aced almost every exam in my childhood. And I am quite successful.<p>In many ways, school just slows you down. But I liked my parents' way. That let me go to school and have that shared experience with other kids while not holding me back.<p>I wonder how I can do that for my kids. Unfortunately, homework is part of the grade and you can't tell the teachers to skip it for your kid. Or maybe you can.
> ... key differences: Each child could work at their own pace, largely through playing educational games and apps that adapted to where they were. There was no particular endpoint that the kids needed to get to at the end of the semester.<p>if self-pacing is possible, not doing it seems like a huge unforced error in education policy
Outside of the Anglosphere homeschooling is not really a thing [1]. Coming from Europe I've personally never meet anyone.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_status_and_statistics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...</a>
Historically the upper class in places like UK had private tutors. This individualised form of education may be making a return over the next years as apps and material become more personalised.
Myself and the wife don't have the skills, time or frankly the patience to be a teacher.<p>My eldest is studying to become a K12 teacher and it is a 4 year degree course so I don't think Zoom and parents are going to replace her soon.<p>My youngest is a "aspy" and when she went to high school it was a disaster - she ended up in a clinic for treatment of depression and one of the triggers was high school.<p>Square peg in a round hole.<p>We fortunately found a tutor that had taught kids with learning disabilities and was close to home and enrolled her in an online school platform for the materials and exams.<p>She had to drop Physics/Chemistry as there was no way for her to do practical lab work even at another place.<p>She went to the tutor's home during the day - helped other kids when not busy and completed Grade 12 over two years - she is now studying IT programming first year at a university.<p>It was the best decision we made ever - home schooling but letting a professional do it and for the right reasons - "We don't trust the govt" or "install my morality/belief system" is shitty reasons IMHO.
Hi all. I'm Jeremy, the husband of the author of this post. We really didn't expect to see this get any particular attention -- but I'm happy to answer questions about homeschooling you might have.<p>As my wife Rachel said in the intro, this post is really about our particular experiences. It's not an attempt to convince anyone else to do the same thing.<p>Home-schooling is very different to what I expected. There are things today that just weren't available to previous generations. In particular, there's a lot of well-designed adaptive apps and websites that take kids through topics at a speed that's appropriate for them. This has meant, in our case, that our daughter has avoided the extreme boredom that she faced when she was at a traditional school, and is now enjoying her learning much more. It's particularly good for topics like mathematics, where if you start getting behind it can become nearly impossible to make progress, and if you're ahead then you might just zone out.<p>Also, Zoom is a game-changer. Our daughter gets tutoring in coding from an MIT computer science grad (who also minored in music and teaches her piano too), in physics from a physicist, in art from a professional artist, in Japanese from a native Japanese speaker, and so forth. Her tutors are from all over the world and are extremely diverse. This has been a lot of fun for her, and has opened her eyes to different ways of thinking about the world. Without Zoom and friends, we'd have been restricted to people that are in our local geographic area. We've had a lot of help from Modulo (<a href="https://www.modulo.app" rel="nofollow">https://www.modulo.app</a>).<p>Another nice thing about Zoom is that the vast majority of her learning occurs in a social environment with 1-5 other kids. We've found that this is a great group size, and is more social than most larger classrooms -- the kids are never told to keep quiet, but instead encouraged to have lots of discussion and ask questions whenever they come up. There's lots of diversions to follow whatever the kids get interested in along the way.<p>I've personally spent a lot of time reading academic papers and books about education and listening to lots of interviews with teachers. There are all kinds of fascinating insights that just haven't been brought into regular schools so far, but we're able to take advantage of in all our daughter's lessons. For example, we use a lot of spaced repetition, and teach her tutors how to take advantage of it too (e.g see <a href="http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html" rel="nofollow">http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html</a>).
I was homeschooled: k-11. I have a graduate degree. My sibling has a similar path. The academics I received as a homeschooler were, frankly, probably 90th percentile, maybe more. Yet, simply going to a good school district with good teachers and supportive parents would, in all likelihood, have given me similar outcomes. And now, looking back twenty-plus years later, I don't think that it produced a materially different effect than others of my age group. Certainly my family's homeschooling did wonders for our academics; others in the homeschool group variously finished high school or did minor college. Nothing remarkable. Just like the public school kids - some did great, some did ok, some scraped by.<p>Barring some _exceptionally_ unusual cases - lets say 4th std dev cases, I feel, sharply, that homeschooling is a bad idea.<p>On a broad social level, it removes expected bodies of knowledge suitable for having a useful society; on an individual level, it leaves them in a bad place for interacting with peers. I also believe that most parents are not qualified to actually supervise modern education past a certain grade level- being a parent is a remarkably easy thing to start doing, after all.<p>The social interaction is a profound and subtle problem. There's this thing about dealing with the mass of peers that homeschooling doesn't teach - but the work world and other situations require. This is not going to come with homeschooling.<p>I also note, in passing, that I am assuming that parents are _trying_ to do exceptional education and are not trying to play particularly ideological games. In other words, something roughly analogous to normal schooling goals. However. This assumption does <i>not</i> hold true in much of homeschooling discourse. Much of homeschooling is an explicit religious approach; some of the homeschooling curricula and groups are actually a religious-political project attempting to build political power with an alternative education system outside. So discussions of homeschooling have to address that elephant in the room.<p>Also in passing, any homeschooling policy worth its salt should ensure that children are simply not being educationally or personally neglected; those cases do exist, unfortunately.<p>tl;dr: don't homeschool. take it from a former homeschooled kid. send the kid to a good public school, please.
With everything about what I've been reading about public schools recently, no way in heck would I want my child in a public school, where instead of teaching the basics, they are more about indoctrinating children into a specific political worldview.<p>I'm neither liberal or conservative, I'm neither. But from what I'm reading, the agenda at public schools is about as hard left, left of left-left-left, as possible. I don't want my children to be indoctrinated to the left or right. I wouldn't have my kids go to a public school where they push religion, either.<p>Both suck.<p>Just...no thanks.
Home schooling sounds great until you start talking to the people who home school. There's always something weird about them. This lady is no exception:<p>>I have been disturbed to follow the ever-accumulating research on cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system harms that can be caused by covid, even in previously healthy people, even in the vaccinated, and even in children. While vaccines significantly reduce risk of death, unfortunately they provide only a limited reduction in Long Covid risk. Immunity wanes, and people face cumulative risks with each new covid infection (so even if you’ve had covid once or twice, it is best to try to avoid reinfections). I am alarmed that leaders are encouraging mass, repeated infections of a generation of children.<p>I'd love nothing more than to spend time going over areas I find fascinating with a child but I know I have my own idiosyncrasies and multiplying them for the next generation isn't doing anyone any favors. Being exposed to multiple ideas is a good way to keep you from going off the deep end.<p>In short: <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=900x900" rel="nofollow">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTsIPRgWUAALz4v?format=png&name=...</a>