I use Facebook a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I generally use it as an outlet to ask questions and bring up discussions about controversial and popular topics (politics, education, science, religion, ethics, etc.) and have meaningful conversations with friends who have varying expertise in different fields (it's somewhat possible on a social network if you avoid the trolls, believe it or not). And this is because I like to learn, and it's largely beneficial for me (and appreciated by my friends, so I'm told).
One of my friends who, like me, is a teacher with a background in studying academic education (I'm a math guy while he's a history guy), posted an education article talking about how teachers are portrayed in our current American culture. I read it and just gave a short response, not particularly expecting anything to emerge from it. But one of his other friends (who I don't know) replied to my comment, setting off a pretty interesting discussion regarding whether or not sending your children to school is an ideal (let alone necessary) decision, and whether or not there should exist compulsory schooling for children. (We didn't talk much about the actual article's topic of portraying teachers, and I'm much more interested in the conversation I had with this other guy). This guy apparently doesn't send his children to school at all, and doesn't feel the need to set up any structured or formalized education for his children. As an educator, I think that's incredibly interesting, but I also feel it's more likely to be detrimental than beneficial for his children in the long run.
I'd like you to read the discussion between me (Red) and this other guy (Blue), and I'd like to hear your thoughts about it (or anything even tangentially related to education or schooling, for that matter). Our mutual friend who posted the article is Green, and the only text I blocked out/ removed were profile pictures and names.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read it
Now that you've (hopefully) read through the discussion between Red (me) and Blue (the other guy), please vote on which statement you agree most with. If you didn't read the conversation, please don't vote. Thanks!
Poll: Whose position do you agree more with?
Red; blue's ideas were pretty flawed. (40)
70%
Both red and blue have equally logical, compatible ideas. (8)
14%
Blue; red's ideas were pretty flawed. (5)
9%
Both red and blue are completely misunderstanding the situation (elaborate via comment). (4)
7%
57 total votes
Your vote: Whose position do you agree more with?
(Vote): Red; blue's ideas were pretty flawed. (Vote): Blue; red's ideas were pretty flawed. (Vote): Both red and blue have equally logical, compatible ideas. (Vote): Both red and blue are completely misunderstanding the situation (elaborate via comment).
The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
On January 09 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote: The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
Yeah he made it pretty clear that he was *not* homeschooling his kids... he was merely not sending his kids to school (which I didn't even know was legal to do).
Okay just because he doesn't use the term himself since he objects to it doesn't mean that legally that isn't what he is doing. Its exactly what he is doing. He just attaches negative stigma to the word "school" for unknown reasons and so doesn't want it describing how he is educating his children.
On January 09 2014 03:35 Sn0_Man wrote: Okay just because he doesn't use the term himself since he objects to it doesn't mean that legally that isn't what he is doing. Its exactly what he is doing. He just attaches negative stigma to the word "school" for unknown reasons and so doesn't want it describing how he is educating his children.
I figured that's how he's legally doing it, but he's not really attempting any formalization or structure for his kids at all, and I'm pretty sure that homeschooling requires some level of testing and benchmarking.
How do the kids learn math? I assume they won't, and calculus, physics, chemistry, and all the really useful subjects will be forever locked away. Algebra and calculus are pretty crucial to understand a lot of topics, as well as to make it though any college.
On January 09 2014 03:48 jrkirby wrote: How do the kids learn math? I assume they won't, and calculus, physics, chemistry, and all the really useful subjects will be forever locked away. Algebra and calculus are pretty crucial to understand a lot of topics, as well as to make it though any college.
As a math educator, I completely agree. But this guy says he's "very very strong at math and pretty decent at science" so clearly the child is going to learn plenty about algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics. Because the guy said "very" twice, so you know he means business.
Can't stand to read the way blue argues his case, when red is being so civil. Having said that, I don't disagree with some of his points. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the deciding factor, in my opinion, is that (unless home schooling becomes more prevalent) you are just creating an unnecessary barrier to 'fitting in' and settling into a social role in society for your child by home schooling them. Whenever they come to be 'integrated' into a school setting, whichever age this is chosen to be, it is going to probably be traumatic for a good proportion of the children inserted this way. The main problem is probably that they won't have experienced the more negative side of human interaction and won't be that ready for it, they won't have built in defences that we all need at points all the way through our lives to maintain.
I'm sure that his philosophy is a hell of a lot better than a lot of other well-meaning parents though.
The dad is a qualified teacher and apparently does math with them "when they want to learn it". And they are apparently well ahead of what the normal math level is for their age (this isn't uncommon).
Seems good enough. Note that he isn't suggesting this as a replacement for high school. Although he isn't really saying his kids will do high school either.
On January 09 2014 03:52 Sn0_Man wrote: The dad is a qualified teacher and apparently does math with them "when they want to learn it". And they are apparently well ahead of what the normal math level is for their age (this isn't uncommon).
Seems good enough. Note that he isn't suggesting this as a replacement for high school. Although he isn't really saying his kids will do high school either.
On January 09 2014 03:52 Sn0_Man wrote: The dad is a qualified teacher and apparently does math with them "when they want to learn it". And they are apparently well ahead of what the normal math level is for their age (this isn't uncommon).
Seems good enough. Note that he isn't suggesting this as a replacement for high school. Although he isn't really saying his kids will do high school either.
I assume this isn't referring to my post.
no it isnt lol. I don't quote as often as i should
On January 09 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote: The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
Yeah he made it pretty clear that he was *not* homeschooling his kids... he was merely not sending his kids to school (which I didn't even know was legal to do).
homeschooling is awesome! I was personally homeschooled from the middle of 4th grade to 8th grade.
I learned how how to type effeciently on a computer (continuously typing in cheats to age of mythology), my love for rts games (age of mythology), and that school subjects are boring compared to computer games
On January 09 2014 03:51 sc4k wrote: Can't stand to read the way blue argues his case, when red is being so civil. Having said that, I don't disagree with some of his points. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the deciding factor, in my opinion, is that (unless home schooling becomes more prevalent) you are just creating an unnecessary barrier to 'fitting in' and settling into a social role in society for your child by home schooling them. Whenever they come to be 'integrated' into a school setting, whichever age this is chosen to be, it is going to probably be traumatic for a good proportion of the children inserted this way. The main problem is probably that they won't have experienced the more negative side of human interaction and won't be that ready for it, they won't have built in defences that we all need at points all the way through our lives to maintain.
I'm sure that his philosophy is a hell of a lot better than a lot of other well-meaning parents though.
I agree. I've seen him comment on my friend's other posts, and he's rather eloquent and seems to be smart, so I assume his decision to not send his children to school is not out of some weird phobia or laziness. But I definitely think that there are going to be some social situations that children and young adults learn quite well when integrated into a microcosm like school. Making friends, dating, being on sports teams, joining clubs, study groups, etc.
In my opinion, the problem is that this is completely impossible to judge without meeting the blue guy and his children in person. I would say that with most parents, school is probably a better option, simply because most people are useless idiots and being subject only to their teaching would be detrimental for anyone. But the guy can actually be a good exception - and if he is not just boasting about the children being ahead of the curve, the children themselves could be exceptionally smart and for such children, school is an incredible waste of time. I for one would have deeply appreciated to have had an alternative to school, where in 13 years (elementary + high) I learned mainly how to kill time while surviving through absolute boredom (which ironically came in very handy when I started to spend half of my time in airplanes or airports some 10 years later) - but the problem would have been that the alternative definitely wouldn't be my parents ...
On January 09 2014 03:51 sc4k wrote: Can't stand to read the way blue argues his case, when red is being so civil. Having said that, I don't disagree with some of his points. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the deciding factor, in my opinion, is that (unless home schooling becomes more prevalent) you are just creating an unnecessary barrier to 'fitting in' and settling into a social role in society for your child by home schooling them. Whenever they come to be 'integrated' into a school setting, whichever age this is chosen to be, it is going to probably be traumatic for a good proportion of the children inserted this way. The main problem is probably that they won't have experienced the more negative side of human interaction and won't be that ready for it, they won't have built in defences that we all need at points all the way through our lives to maintain.
I'm sure that his philosophy is a hell of a lot better than a lot of other well-meaning parents though.
I agree. I've seen him comment on my friend's other posts, and he's rather eloquent and seems to be smart, so I assume his decision to not send his children to school is not out of some weird phobia or laziness. But I definitely think that there are going to be some social situations that children and young adults learn quite well when integrated into a microcosm like school. Making friends, dating, being on sports teams, joining clubs, study groups, etc.
"seems to be smart" can also be substituted with "seems confident with his assertions"
being confident and being smart are 2 different things though
I agree with your main points in the beginning that sending your kids to school is much more beneficial than detrimental to their learning and future opportunities. Blue seems to have a negative connotation with school and I don't think it'll be easy for Blue's kids to have as many opportunities as other children who attend high-school/college.
On January 09 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote: The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
Yeah he made it pretty clear that he was *not* homeschooling his kids... he was merely not sending his kids to school (which I didn't even know was legal to do).
I learned how how to type effeciently on a computer (continuously typing in cheats to age of mythology), my love for rts games (age of mythology), and that school subjects are boring compared to computer games
I actually learned how to type fast by typing in cheats whenever I played Starcraft BW. I remember in my fifth grade spelling bee, I beat out the other kids in my class because they gave me the word "overwhelming". Having typed in power overwhelming for god mode just about every game I played, I got that one for sure.
And then, I was CHEATED out of the grade competition when they gave me a word that I'll never forget. They told me to spell residence. I spelled it like residents and they told me that was wrong. What bs.
School is not only for education...it is where a child goes to learn how to live within a community as a social being. It is highly detrimental to take this away from a child, because school is a place where lasting friendships can be made, relationships with teachers are created, and just so many X things can happen to you while you are at a position in school. The kids should be doing something like this with a bunch of other students, I don't care if it is public or technical school. They should not be left alone under a restricted human influence. Going to school is not just about education.
School could be a lot better than it is (judging from what I experienced at German schools obviously), but I seriously doubt that not sending kids to school is a better option.
On January 09 2014 04:17 Epishade wrote: I agree with your main points in the beginning that sending your kids to school is much more beneficial than detrimental to their learning and future opportunities. Blue seems to have a negative connotation with school and I don't think it'll be easy for Blue's kids to have as many opportunities as other children who attend high-school/college.
On January 09 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote: The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
Yeah he made it pretty clear that he was *not* homeschooling his kids... he was merely not sending his kids to school (which I didn't even know was legal to do).
I learned how how to type effeciently on a computer (continuously typing in cheats to age of mythology), my love for rts games (age of mythology), and that school subjects are boring compared to computer games
I actually learned how to type fast by typing in cheats whenever I played Starcraft BW. I remember in my fifth grade spelling bee, I beat out the other kids in my class because they gave me the word "overwhelming". Having typed in power overwhelming for god mode just about every game I played, I got that one for sure.
And then, I was CHEATED out of the grade competition when they gave me a word that I'll never forget. They told me to spell residence. I spelled it like residents and they told me that was wrong. What bs.
You need to ask the definition of the word before spelling it. That would've cleared up your confusion.
Blue makes a lot of conjectures, and bad assumptions. For example his point about his children have been missing on only ONE thing when not going to school and school going children missing on MANY things, being unable to listen to other people ideas when at school. Who is going to stop you from listening to other people ideas at school??
On January 09 2014 03:51 sc4k wrote: Can't stand to read the way blue argues his case, when red is being so civil. Having said that, I don't disagree with some of his points. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the deciding factor, in my opinion, is that (unless home schooling becomes more prevalent) you are just creating an unnecessary barrier to 'fitting in' and settling into a social role in society for your child by home schooling them. Whenever they come to be 'integrated' into a school setting, whichever age this is chosen to be, it is going to probably be traumatic for a good proportion of the children inserted this way. The main problem is probably that they won't have experienced the more negative side of human interaction and won't be that ready for it, they won't have built in defences that we all need at points all the way through our lives to maintain.
I'm sure that his philosophy is a hell of a lot better than a lot of other well-meaning parents though.
I agree. I've seen him comment on my friend's other posts, and he's rather eloquent and seems to be smart, so I assume his decision to not send his children to school is not out of some weird phobia or laziness. But I definitely think that there are going to be some social situations that children and young adults learn quite well when integrated into a microcosm like school. Making friends, dating, being on sports teams, joining clubs, study groups, etc.
"seems to be smart" can also be substituted with "seems confident with his assertions"
being confident and being smart are 2 different things though
I agree with you. Unfortunately, that's a distinction I can't make in regards to him, as I don't know him.
On January 09 2014 04:21 Golgotha wrote: School is not only for education...it is where a child goes to learn how to live within a community as a social being. It is highly detrimental to take this away from a child, because school is a place where lasting friendships can be made, relationships with teachers are created, and just so many X things can happen to you while you are at a position in school. The kids should be doing something like this with a bunch of other students, I don't care if it is public or technical school. They should not be left alone under a restricted human influence. Going to school is not just about education.
Absolutely. The social aspects are incredibly important, not just the academic ones.
On January 09 2014 04:43 spinesheath wrote: School could be a lot better than it is (judging from what I experienced at German schools obviously), but I seriously doubt that not sending kids to school is a better option.
That's my take on the situation as well. Blue is essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
On January 09 2014 04:44 Mstring wrote: Bravo to Blue. His kids will become leaders.
Sarcasm?
On January 09 2014 04:53 Roman666 wrote: Blue makes a lot of conjectures, and bad assumptions. For example his point about his children have been missing on only ONE thing when not going to school and school going children missing on MANY things, being unable to listen to other people ideas when at school. Who is going to stop you from listening to other people ideas at school??
Yeah, and he won't even know what his students are currently missing out on, by removing them from the entire experience... so there's no way he'll be able to compensate for these other things he doesn't realize.
Homeschooling is terrible in majority of cases because, however awful modern schools might be, kids need to learn to deal with a wider range of social situations than staying at home with their parents, ideally before they turn 30.
On January 09 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote: The fun part here is to vote "neither" then not leave a comment elaborating.
(I didn't actually do this).
Homeschooling is a thing and its not that hard so blue might not understand that they can get what they want from that. Unless the US has some weird laws about that Iunno.
Yeah he made it pretty clear that he was *not* homeschooling his kids... he was merely not sending his kids to school (which I didn't even know was legal to do).
I think he just doesn't want to call it homeschooling, but that is in fact what he is doing. Assuming this as a premise, I'm just going to talk about homeschooling.
On the topic, both red and blue have good points but they aren't really arguing against each other towards the same conclusion. Red seems to be arguing that school should be required, while blue is arguing that homeschooling is better. Blue is off in assuming that it would be better for everyone, but I think he would be correct in asserting that it is better for certain individuals, which doesn't conflict Red's arguments. I think schooling should be mandatory, but homeschooling should be an encouraged option for those capable. To not require schooling would be a huge detriment to our society because homeschooling is not easy and requires competent parenting, which only a small percentage of the adult community I would expect to be able to do more efficiently than school.
School does have its detriments, in that it kills the enjoyment of learning and doesn't teach kids how to learn things on their own. Obviously this isn't true of every school, and some private schools can avoid these negatives fairly well, but it's pretty true of most public schools. The bigger drawback of public schools in my eyes is that it doesn't allow above average children to flourish, but instead they are held back by the No Kid Left Behind policy.
On the topic of homeschooling being bad for the social life of the kids, I have to disagree with that. I work a job in which I interact with a lot of families/tourists, and it's always the kids who are here during the school season (which is possible due to homeschooling) who are much more sociable and interact with me and other adults without being shy about it. Going to school teaches you how to interact with other kids your same age +/- 1 year, whereas a homeschooled child with competent parents should have been creating social situations for the child where he learns to interact with kids of a much wider range, and adults outside of just his teacher much more often.
Conclusion: I think homeschooling is best for competent parents, which, if I were to offer a completely rough estimate, is probably only around 10-20% of the adult population, and then only if one of them is able to stay home with the kid full time as well which limits it further. The main drawback of homeschooling is the child will be exposed much more strongly to the biases of the parent, since almost all interactions will be set up/organized by the parent.
I have also met a couple older (17-19) homeschooled people and they are almost always more mature/intelligent than the average person I meet in the same age group. Obviously such a small sample is irrelevant scientifically, and they may have just ended up that way regardless, but I have no negative experiences with a homeschooled individual.
First of all, HS in the US is a joke, so I doubt Blue's kids are missing much on the academic side if what he says is true (i.e. he and his wife are intellectually qualified to teach them).
I think, however, that the kids will be missing a bit of discipline by not going to school; being forced to study/learn shit you don't like is a life skill, and if his kids are only learning when they feel like it, they may run into problems later down the line.
I also think it's delusional of him to insist that his kids will be on an equal footing with those who have HS/college degrees. While it may be true that they'll be better equipped to do a wider variety of jobs/tasks because they've lived more enriched lives (or whatever he wants to pass it off as), in the end it will boil down to how others see his kids, not how he sees them; an employer may not care that the kid is a jack of all trades, he just wants to know if he can do X, and if another applicant also demonstrates that they can do X while also having tangible proof of qualifications, I think his kids will lose out.
Also, it's really damn easy to indoctrinate your kids in this kind of an environment. I ultimately think you learn more from your peers than your teachers, both socially and academically. It's not just about "sending your kids out to play when the other kids get home" = SUCCESS! By spending time in school with others, you learn how others think and see the world, and that can be worth its weight in gold.
Hopefully that's coherent. Splitting headache, argh. I am normally quite cynical about the value of US education (in that, I think it's often overstated compared to what it actually is), but even as bad as the US HS education system is, it's still valuable to some degree. Then again, it's hard to say in this situation, 'cause who knows, Blue could be really darn qualified, and he does say at the beginning that the major premise he disagrees with is that all kids should go to school. (And I do think there are some kids who are better taught at home than at school.)
I agree that it's beneficial, and in most cases necessary, for children to go to school. It's not even about the subjects you learn at school, even though it can be good preparation for higher education. IMO the primary benefit of formal schooling is that it teaches you two very important things:
- You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
- No matter how highly you think of yourself or how lowly of others, you have to get along with your peers, and this always means give-and-take. Pretending to be the center of the universe might work on your parents (and your reluctant older siblings), but it's the fastest way to a lonely experience elsewhere.
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: I agree that it's beneficial, and in most cases necessary, for children to go to school. It's not even about the subjects you learn at school, even though it can be good preparation for higher education. IMO the primary benefit of formal schooling is that it teaches you two very important things:
- You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
- No matter how highly you think of yourself or how lowly of others, you have to get along with your peers, and this always means give-and-take. Pretending to be the center of the universe might work on your parents (and your reluctant older siblings), but it's the fastest way to a lonely experience elsewhere.
I don't see how these can't be counteracted by competent parenting. Have a disciplined and balanced education regime for them and they have to stick to it. A child is not always going to want to study, especially whatever topics he might not be as proficient in, so that's where the discipline comes in.
For learning to get along with individuals you don't enjoy the company of, a homeschooled kid can learn this by interacting with groups of kids doing sports or whatever other group activities the parents can still enroll him in.
On January 09 2014 05:04 Salazarz wrote: Homeschooling is terrible in majority of cases because, however awful modern schools might be, kids need to learn to deal with a wider range of social situations than staying at home with their parents, ideally before they turn 30.
Schools need to be improved, not removed.
I like that quote
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: I agree that it's beneficial, and in most cases necessary, for children to go to school. It's not even about the subjects you learn at school, even though it can be good preparation for higher education. IMO the primary benefit of formal schooling is that it teaches you two very important things:
- You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
- No matter how highly you think of yourself or how lowly of others, you have to get along with your peers, and this always means give-and-take. Pretending to be the center of the universe might work on your parents (and your reluctant older siblings), but it's the fastest way to a lonely experience elsewhere.
I think those are two good points as well. It's very hard to live a life of isolation, and you'll eventually need to go and do things out of your comfort zone anyway, so being overly-sheltered at home can be a problem.
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: I agree that it's beneficial, and in most cases necessary, for children to go to school. It's not even about the subjects you learn at school, even though it can be good preparation for higher education. IMO the primary benefit of formal schooling is that it teaches you two very important things:
- You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
- No matter how highly you think of yourself or how lowly of others, you have to get along with your peers, and this always means give-and-take. Pretending to be the center of the universe might work on your parents (and your reluctant older siblings), but it's the fastest way to a lonely experience elsewhere.
I don't see how these can't be counteracted by competent parenting. Have a disciplined and balanced education regime for them and they have to stick to it. A child is not always going to want to study, especially whatever topics he might not be as proficient in, so that's where the discipline comes in.
For learning to get along with individuals you don't enjoy the company of, a homeschooled kid can learn this by interacting with groups of kids doing sports or whatever other group activities the parents can still enroll him in.
Very true, although the emphasis is definitely on competent parenting!
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: I agree that it's beneficial, and in most cases necessary, for children to go to school. It's not even about the subjects you learn at school, even though it can be good preparation for higher education. IMO the primary benefit of formal schooling is that it teaches you two very important things:
- You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
- No matter how highly you think of yourself or how lowly of others, you have to get along with your peers, and this always means give-and-take. Pretending to be the center of the universe might work on your parents (and your reluctant older siblings), but it's the fastest way to a lonely experience elsewhere.
I don't see how these can't be counteracted by competent parenting. Have a disciplined and balanced education regime for them and they have to stick to it. A child is not always going to want to study, especially whatever topics he might not be as proficient in, so that's where the discipline comes in.
For learning to get along with individuals you don't enjoy the company of, a homeschooled kid can learn this by interacting with groups of kids doing sports or whatever other group activities the parents can still enroll him in.
Very true, although the emphasis is definitely on competent parenting!
Yes that's why even though I believe strongly in homeschooling, I still think schooling should remain the strong recommendation (although schools definitely need improving). There are no requirements for a parent who wishes to homeschool their child at the moment, and for some parents to attempt it can be a very irresponsible thing to do, especially at higher grade levels.
Ideally, as the person above me said, schools would be improved to the point where homeschooling is completely unnecessary.
The whole idea of taking hundreds of kids and forcing them to learn the same things the same way is terrible. That being said, no one seems interested in developing solutions for the kids that don't learn the way they're being taught, and are a lot more creative than schools will allow. The current school structure crushes creativity and though they ask kids to "think outside of the box" in high school, they're taught the exact opposite in elementary and middle school. Blame standards, blame administrators, I don't know. I don't think this guy is as radical as people are making him sound.
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: - You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
I guess you learned this great truth of life in school, didn't you? It's nevertheless hard to blame you for such ignorance, because this is what the current mass education system is mainly deisgned to do - to force the kids into thinking that the lack of enjoyment is a natural state, to make them "grown adults", which is a well engineered euphemism for supression of indivuduality and conformance to the system of the society. Threre are actually more instances in this thread when people put something like "learing to deal with how things work" as a plus of school, while it is the complete oposite - imagine if now we make a whole generation not go to school and the great values of hard but completely unnecessary work, rigid daily schedule and in general most of what makes up the contemporary corporate world will be lost forever. Wouldn't that be a much nicer world? (Unintuitve Google keyword: "bullshit jobs" for more reading in this direction.)
Intelligent children can learn everything they would have learned in school at home, without much effort or instruction. Gifted children learn to talk, read, write and do basic arithmetic before they even start school just fine, without even realizing how miserable institutions can make the experience of learning. The primary value of schools is as an extended kindergarten to free up their parents' time for work and to keep children from making trouble and endangering themselves.
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: - You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
I guess you learned this great truth of life in school, didn't you? It's nevertheless hard to blame you for such ignorance, because this is what the current mass education system is mainly deisgned to do - to force the kids into thinking that the lack of enjoyment is a natural state, to make them "grown adults", which is a well engineered euphemism for supression of indivuduality and conformance to the system of the society. Threre are actually more instances in this thread when people put something like "learing to deal with how things work" as a plus of school, while it is the complete oposite - imagine if now we make a whole generation not go to school and the great values of hard but completely unnecessary work, rigid daily schedule and in general most of what makes up the contemporary corporate world will be lost forever. Wouldn't that be a much nicer world? (Unintuitve Google keyword: "bullshit jobs" for more reading in this direction.)
While you certainly have a point, calh wasn't completely wrong in saying that either. Even if you're working your dream job you can still run into things that you don't enjoy doing - but have to do them anyway. Everyone had to file taxes, regardless of how fun you think they are. I think a more apt way of phrasing "doing things you don't like doing" would be something like "learning how to weigh the consequences of doing a task vs the enjoyment of the process."
I was homeschooled for my entire life up until I turned 17. I'm now in university, top of my class for computer science. (Just to qualify what I want to say, not to boast. Top of a fairly small class isn't that big of a deal )
What blue is referring to is what I term "unschooling", that is, non-structured, non-formal education at home. It's popular at the moment among home-schoolers because of the move in education in general (which has been going on for a while) which allows the child to learn what they want to learn. The exact term slips my mind at the moment, but it's essentially self-learning as opposed to being told what to learn.
I was more traditionally home-schooled, with a formal curriculum created by my mum and dad, and had a desk to work at and so on. In terms of educational quality alone, what I received was better than any other formal educational institution that I know of. Perhaps some of the top private schools were able to provide a similar level, but only the best ones. However, being in a structured environment is quite different from the open-plan unschooling method. The major flaw with unschooling that I can see is that children simply don't know what is out there and what to learn, so there are likely to be large holes in their knowledge. If they're not interested in a subject, they simply don't need to learn it. To be fair, it wouldn't surprise me if the parents tend to make non-subtle pushes in directions of particular subjects they want their children to learn anyway.
On January 09 2014 03:51 sc4k wrote: Can't stand to read the way blue argues his case, when red is being so civil. Having said that, I don't disagree with some of his points. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the deciding factor, in my opinion, is that (unless home schooling becomes more prevalent) you are just creating an unnecessary barrier to 'fitting in' and settling into a social role in society for your child by home schooling them. Whenever they come to be 'integrated' into a school setting, whichever age this is chosen to be, it is going to probably be traumatic for a good proportion of the children inserted this way. The main problem is probably that they won't have experienced the more negative side of human interaction and won't be that ready for it, they won't have built in defences that we all need at points all the way through our lives to maintain.
I'm sure that his philosophy is a hell of a lot better than a lot of other well-meaning parents though.
I agree. I've seen him comment on my friend's other posts, and he's rather eloquent and seems to be smart, so I assume his decision to not send his children to school is not out of some weird phobia or laziness. But I definitely think that there are going to be some social situations that children and young adults learn quite well when integrated into a microcosm like school. Making friends, dating, being on sports teams, joining clubs, study groups, etc.
On January 09 2014 04:21 Golgotha wrote: School is not only for education...it is where a child goes to learn how to live within a community as a social being. It is highly detrimental to take this away from a child, because school is a place where lasting friendships can be made, relationships with teachers are created, and just so many X things can happen to you while you are at a position in school. The kids should be doing something like this with a bunch of other students, I don't care if it is public or technical school. They should not be left alone under a restricted human influence. Going to school is not just about education.
On January 09 2014 05:04 Salazarz wrote: Homeschooling is terrible in majority of cases because, however awful modern schools might be, kids need to learn to deal with a wider range of social situations than staying at home with their parents, ideally before they turn 30.
Schools need to be improved, not removed.
All three of you, with all due respect, are completely wrong when it comes to the idea that school is necessary for children to learn how to act in social situations.
Firstly, I had no lack of social situations involving people of all ages. Church, visiting other people's homes, playing with the neighbourhood kids (one of whom I have had a lasting friendship continuing to this day), playing in numerous sports clubs (soccer, athletics, swimming, crosscountry for the most part), trips to parks and museums and shopping malls and so on have been a constant thing in my life. Now that I'm attending university, and having worked for a couple of years prior to university, I have had no difficulty at all adjusting to being with other people of my age, or older, or younger. I've been with other people all my life, from all walks of life, of all ages. And I know plenty of public schooled children who have not.
The only social situation which children going to public schools have is being with large amounts of similarly aged children, with a few authority figures which don't have that much power. They have a more limited social experience than I have had, not a more expansive one. Then you add in the amount of peer pressure, bullying, and negative influences that commonly occur in a school, and I would say that it is far worse for the social development of a child to be in a school than to not be in a school. For me, following the herd with fashion, drugs, alcohol, smoking, cussing, thought patterns, laziness, whatever it is, is not a "normal" thing, because I wasn't brought up in a situation where I was surrounded by hundreds of children doing X thing, where if I did Y thing I would be ostracized. And of course if I HAD been brought up in that situation, I would quickly learn not to do Y. Y might be better than X, or worse. But I wouldn't do it for fear of this supposedly necessary social situation called school.
I never went to high school at a public or private school, so I can't say from my OWN experience that there would be some climate shock for homeschooled children starting at a high school. What I can say is that going out into the work force, and from there into university, presented little difficulty in terms of social interaction. I suppose I didn't realize how much gossip went on in some/most workplaces before I started work, so you could say I wasn't used to that social situation. Having said that, I was pretty easily able to recognize it for what it was, and deal with it, so I don't think I was particularly slowed down in that regard.
On January 09 2014 04:59 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Sarcasm?
No. What would make you suspect this?
I'd imagine that almost no mathematical or scientific concepts would be learned in a child's spare time
I spent all my spare time learning mathematical and scientific concepts until I started high school. Then I spent all my spare time playing computer games in order to escape the reality that was the imposition of schooling.
@ Birdie: Wrt social life, I think it depends on the kid. Being homeschooled would not have done my brother and I any good, and both of us were actually bullied in public school. Not that I think that was a good experience for either of us, but it was more than made up for by the friends we did actually make throughout elementary/middle/high school (I met some of my best friends in 2nd grade). This isn't to say that you can't make good friends outside of school, but for my brother and I, it wouldn't have happened, whether it's because we were naturally inclined towards solitude or because our parents weren't very big on social activities/gatherings either (and so never encouraged us to socialize with the other kids to begin with).
On January 09 2014 04:10 opisska wrote: In my opinion, the problem is that this is completely impossible to judge without meeting the blue guy and his children in person. I would say that with most parents, school is probably a better option, simply because most people are useless idiots and being subject only to their teaching would be detrimental for anyone. But the guy can actually be a good exception - and if he is not just boasting about the children being ahead of the curve, the children themselves could be exceptionally smart and for such children, school is an incredible waste of time. I for one would have deeply appreciated to have had an alternative to school, where in 13 years (elementary + high) I learned mainly how to kill time while surviving through absolute boredom (which ironically came in very handy when I started to spend half of my time in airplanes or airports some 10 years later) - but the problem would have been that the alternative definitely wouldn't be my parents ...
Depending on the school there is gifted programs you can join. At my school if you had an IQ above the 98th percentile you were allowed to do extra things outside of class that were at a level above what the other kids were doing. For example, making rockets, higher level sciences, math, etc. If you were invited you were obviously allowed to decline if you didn't want to put that effort in.
On January 09 2014 06:21 babylon wrote: @ Birdie: Wrt social life, I think it depends on the kid. Being homeschooled would not have done my brother and I any good, and both of us were actually bullied in public school. Not that I think that was a good experience for either of us, but it was more than made up for by the friends we did actually make throughout elementary/middle/high school (I met some of my best friends in 2nd grade). This isn't to say that you can't make good friends outside of school, but for my brother and I, it wouldn't have happened, whether it's because we were naturally inclined towards solitude or because our parents weren't very big on social activities/gatherings either (and so never encouraged us to socialize with the other kids to begin with).
I think you touched on the reason at the end there: It depends more-so on the parents than the kids. It's the parent's responsibility to make sure the kids are receiving adequate education in all facets of life.
On January 09 2014 04:10 opisska wrote: In my opinion, the problem is that this is completely impossible to judge without meeting the blue guy and his children in person. I would say that with most parents, school is probably a better option, simply because most people are useless idiots and being subject only to their teaching would be detrimental for anyone. But the guy can actually be a good exception - and if he is not just boasting about the children being ahead of the curve, the children themselves could be exceptionally smart and for such children, school is an incredible waste of time. I for one would have deeply appreciated to have had an alternative to school, where in 13 years (elementary + high) I learned mainly how to kill time while surviving through absolute boredom (which ironically came in very handy when I started to spend half of my time in airplanes or airports some 10 years later) - but the problem would have been that the alternative definitely wouldn't be my parents ...
Depending on the school there is gifted programs you can join. At my school if you had an IQ above the 98th percentile you were allowed to do extra things outside of class that were at a level above what the other kids were doing. For example, making rockets, higher level sciences, math, etc. If you were invited you were obviously allowed to decline if you didn't want to put that effort in.
I think that's the exception rather than the normal. No school in my area had anything for gifted kids, my high school did not even have AP classes (although it was private and the average class was above what you'd see in a public school).
I would rather stab myself in the arm, multiple times with a rusty fork than carry on a discussion like this with some random person online.
Fact of the matter remains, you can foster unique fairy creatures or accept the rules of the game we all play.
School isn't for learning quantifiable knowledge. I learned pretty much jack shit from early school years, got all of it from home. The value of school is learning to deal with idiots. Not everyone is as great as your family and sooner or later you're gonna have to confront them if you choose to live in society. You deal with teachers, other kids and most importantly the system. You can't have your parents, books or movies tell you how the system works, you have to live it before you can make an informed decision on whether you want to accept it.
Choice is a privilege and the choice of accepting society in particular. Society is built around the idea of providing a safe environment for children to grow without the constant attention of their parents. Children happen. They're born and when they are - they impact the ability of their parent(s) making a choice in regards to society.
All this is of course irrelevant to your little facebook discussion. That numbskull questions the point of having schools at all. Well, believe me, if i learned a lot from having to deal with the idiots, that's nothing compared to the absolute necessity of the idiots being exposed to other sources of authority than their even more hopeless parents. We're talking the worst form of parents here. The ones who have given up and embraced some pseudo-suicidal logic of life being one long slope down toward inevitable disappointment. The one dream they put in the heads of their sons (yeah, daughters are just downright given up on form the get-go, though that often serves them well as the complete absurdity of their parents defeatism and disproportion to reality of their situation may cause an earlier break from family) is a haphazard vision of becoming a sports star.
Now most of these kids will live out the self fulfilling prophecy they were born into, but some can be saved thanks to the miracle of school. Actually this pretty much only applies to daughters as well. While young boys may come to terms with the idea of school being a prison, time that has to be served before entering into brief military service followed by a life doing construction work, their endurance may be explained by comradery. As others around them follow the same path, it must be sane. Girls however are presented with no vision of a future whatsoever and may either be born with looks sufficient to fit the vision of becoming a young mother and house wife. Or not - in which case rather than following a beaten track along with their "bro's" they question what they want to do with their lives. School is often one way out for them. What will be their way out of home schooling?
My arm is getting quite sore from the fork now so i'll stop writing/stabbing but yeah in conclusion - you've basically been arguing over the concept of rumspringa. Is there potential for a happy life being Amish? Sure, but choosing to limit ourselves is choosing a mild form of lobotomy, it's a choice that's perhaps ok to make for yourself but not for your kids.
Rumspringa is not a functioning concept. Nor is homeschooling. They're denial at the expense of your children, limiting their most precious gift and your main responsibility to grant them as a parent - choice.
To me there's no shittier feeling in the world than being forced to try to teach an unmotivated student. I don't think it's realistic to let unmotivated students just not show up, but it would provide a much better experience for teachers and motivated students alike.
@Birdie - just because YOU had a positive experience with home schooling doesn't mean it's inherently superior to attending a formal learning institution. Likewise simply because schools in your place and time are awful doesn't mean all schools have to be such. Not all parents have time or money to put their children into numerous sports clubs or take them on constant trips to parks and museums; similarly, not every school is filled with cliques of bullies and smokers.
You also have to consider that even smartest of parents don't always know what they should teach to their kids, and even smartest of children don't always know what they want to learn until they at least try their hand at it. There are millions of parents who firmly believe liberal subjects are a waste of time; likewise there are millions of parents who are sure that maths is useless because their kid is destined to become a carpenter or a lawyer.
I wholeheartedly agree that modern educational institutions are very flawed in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean you can just do away with it completely. It's like saying, 'well you know what, the legal system in USA isn't very good, let's just replace it with anarchy.'
Thrill I don't know what you're talking about but it's completely different from what happened to me.
On January 09 2014 06:45 Salazarz wrote: @Birdie - just because YOU had a positive experience with home schooling doesn't mean it's inherently superior to attending a formal learning institution. Likewise simply because schools in your place and time are awful doesn't mean all schools have to be such. Not all parents have time or money to put their children into numerous sports clubs or take them on constant trips to parks and museums; similarly, not every school is filled with cliques of bullies and smokers.
You also have to consider that even smartest of parents don't always know what they should teach to their kids, and even smartest of children don't always know what they want to learn until they at least try their hand at it. There are millions of parents who firmly believe liberal subjects are a waste of time; likewise there are millions of parents who are sure that maths is useless because their kid is destined to become a carpenter or a lawyer.
I wholeheartedly agree that modern educational institutions are very flawed in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean you can just do away with it completely. It's like saying, 'well you know what, the legal system in USA isn't very good, let's just replace it with anarchy.'
I see what you're saying, but from my knowledge of schools in New Zealand, homeschooling is far superior for most people, and most people would benefit from home schooling. You don't have to pay to do a lot of social things, too. I didn't have to go to sports clubs to gain social experience, as it were.
With regards to your second paragraph, the good thing about homeschooling is that the parents are completely responsible. They can teach their children whatever they want. Some may teach badly, some may teach well, but from the moment of conception children are their responsibility; it's quite artificial to then place them in schools from the age of 5 to 18 as if suddenly the state is responsible for their children's education.
I don't know if it's necessarily a good idea to do away with schools entirely, I'm not sure enough yet as to how that would work out.
I would rather stab myself in the arm, multiple times with a rusty fork than carry on a discussion like this with some random person online.
Fact of the matter remains, you can foster unique fairy creatures or accept the rules of the game we all play.
School isn't for learning quantifiable knowledge. I learned pretty much jack shit from early school years, got all of it from home. The value of school is learning to deal with idiots. Not everyone is as great as your family and sooner or later you're gonna have to confront them if you choose to live in society. You deal with teachers, other kids and most importantly the system. You can't have your parents, books or movies tell you how the system works, you have to live it before you can make an informed decision on whether you want to accept it.
Choice is a privilege and the choice of accepting society in particular. Society is built around the idea of providing a safe environment for children to grow without the constant attention of their parents. Children happen. They're born and when they are - they impact the ability of their parent(s) making a choice in regards to society.
All this is of course irrelevant to your little facebook discussion. That numbskull questions the point of having schools at all. Well, believe me, if i learned a lot from having to deal with the idiots, that's nothing compared to the absolute necessity of the idiots being exposed to other sources of authority than their even more hopeless parents. We're talking the worst form of parents here. The ones who have given up and embraced some pseudo-suicidal logic of life being one long slope down toward inevitable disappointment. The one dream they put in the heads of their sons (yeah, daughters are just downright given up on form the get-go, though that often serves them well as the complete absurdity of their parents defeatism and disproportion to reality of their situation may cause an earlier break from family) is a haphazard vision of becoming a sports star.
Now most of these kids will live out the self fulfilling prophecy they were born into, but some can be saved thanks to the miracle of school. Actually this pretty much only applies to daughters as well. While young boys may come to terms with the idea of school being a prison, time that has to be served before entering into brief military service followed by a life doing construction work, their endurance may be explained by comradery. As others around them follow the same path, it must be sane. Girls however are presented with no vision of a future whatsoever and may either be born with looks sufficient to fit the vision of becoming a young mother and house wife. Or not - in which case rather than following a beaten track along with their "bro's" they question what they want to do with their lives. School is often one way out for them. What will be their way out of home schooling?
My arm is getting quite sore from the fork now so i'll stop writing/stabbing but yeah in conclusion - you've basically been arguing over the concept of rumspringa. Is there potential for a happy life being Amish? Sure, but choosing to limit ourselves is choosing a mild form of lobotomy, it's a choice that's perhaps ok to make for yourself but not for your kids.
Rumspringa is not a functioning concept. Nor is homeschooling. They're denial at the expense of your children, limiting their most precious gift and your main responsibility to grant them as a parent - choice.
You seem to have a very poor grasp on what homeschooling actually is, and automatically assume the worst case scenario. The problem is that not enough people thoroughly understand what it means to homeschool a child, and obviously those individuals should not be homeschooling. The only benefit of schooling you really listed was "learning to deal with idiots" but there is no reason why you have to go to school to learn it, and that's assuming that it's something you even need to learn directly. Want to really learn how to deal with idiots? Get any service job anywhere.
No one is arguing homeschooling is for everyone (except maybe Blue), but rather for qualified individuals instead.
Honestly, from my experience as someone who went to public school, I have to say that 'schooling' (at least in my experience) was probably the most detrimental thing to learning I and a majority of my classmates had to go through. The way (again, from my experience) schooling works right now is entirely about memorization rather than understanding, and this leads to huge gaps in learning (especially in fields like mathematics where understanding the underlying concepts of the formulas is thousands of times more important than memorizing the formulas themselves) and people abusing the system (i.e. memorizing things for the test then promptly forgetting them). The result is that school becomes not a place of learning things, but a place of learning how to bullshit your way through things so you can spend most of your time doing 'fun' things (i.e. hanging out with friends).
I've always been great at learning, but I'm horrible at school. From my experience, students who are great at learning but bad at school loved classes that were graded heavily on the test and hated classes that were graded heavily on assignments, because if you genuinely understood the material there was very little chance you would fuck up on a test but having to suffer through the 'busy work' of assignments was a chore, while students who did really well at school wanted assignment heavy classes because the assignments were garunteed points if you spent the time to do them and lessened the 'randomness' of studying for a test (oh god, nothing I studied was on the test!).
I actually didn't learn I was doing essays wrong until my Junior year in high school, where I took a Theory of Knowledge class with an absolutely amazing teacher whom I was actually quite close to (she was more like a college professor in the sense that we would actualy go out to coffee together and talk about random things ect, she was a great resource and really helped me with some self study things I was doing at the time). I got really interested in one of the topics we had and ended up going way above and beyond the requirements of the asssignment, doing lots of outside research to confirm / oppose my arguments and explaining why I believed one way, but I only ended up getting a C on the essay. I was obviously quite confused and a bit hurt because of this, because I respected her and put a lot of effort into the work, so I talked to her after class trying to understand why I got the grade I did.
Apparently essays in high school are supposed to be regurgitating what we talk about in class; I had assumed that was knowledge we all knew (since we had learned it in class) and used it as the basis for starting my essay which was about things I wanted to learn about that built upon the basic concepts that we learned in class. She admitted that the work I did was really amazing and that she knew I knew the material we had discussed in class, but that my essay didn't explain that to her so she couldn't give me full marks. I ended up getting A's on the rest of my essays in high school, and felt it was a waste of effort every time. I always wanted to be exploring new concepts rather than just regurgitating what I already knew on paper.
I was really lucky to have an older teacher in elementary school who broke her hip and ended up getting assigned a TA (or student teacher or something along those lines) who pretty much did her work for her. As a result, she took a couple students aside who were excelling (This was just before the No Child Left Behind act, which was garbage) and offered to let them learn whatever they wanted. I think one of the best things she did was that she would always present the work in the form of a puzzle (i.e. presenting me with 5-10 examples of a math problem I had never seen before with all of the work shown and telling me to figure how it worked). Since I love challenges / puzzles like this, I would spend hours outside of class thinking about it, trying to understand how it worked. In fourth grade, I went from being able to do multiplication faster than my peers to 'rediscovering' the basics of exponents, logs, along with a pretty deep understanding of trigonometry, even some rudimentary calculus and exploring in depth the flaws / limitations of a base 10 math system and the metric system. And it wasn't memorization that I was learning either; I understood how math worked, and as a result I was able to start figuring out problems I had never seen or encountered before (notation aside) just by thinking about the problem rather than memorizing a formula.
I went from this to having a math teacher in high school who actually created a problem that was unsolvable with trigonometry (the numbers on the angles / sides made it impossible for that triangle to exist) and when I pointed it out to them told me to 'just plug in the formula anyway and dont tell the other students since it would only confuse them more'. I died a little bit inside and had to suffer through the only trigonmetry class my school offered just to get enough math credits to graduate.
Maybe college is better, I don't know, but honestly I've just started viewing school as a barrier to entry for jobs rather than a place of actual learning. I wont go to college unless I decide theres a job I want that requires a degree. School (at least from my experience) is far too formulaic and results based to be a place of genuine learning, and it's only moving more and more in the wrong direction. Teachers can be a great resource, but they're still forced to make sure you know only what they teach and can't give you anything (in terms of results in their class) for learning beyond that. And in the end, the only thing that matters in school is if you have an A, B, C, D or F on your report card, not if you've actually learned anything.
edit: I guess to formulate my response to the OP, from my experience in school it's hardly and ideal place of learning, and I feel like 'homeschooling' in the way your friend described it has the potential to be a better learning environment. However, not all parents are created equal, some would definitely just make things worse for the children. I also feel like it's likely to create a very independently minded child who isn't willing to 'conform' to society when situations demand it, and I think that's an important lesson you have to learn (i.e. you HAVE to go to college and get good enough grades to become a X, Y or Z, regardless of if you have the skills). But it's certainly not one worth suffering through public education for.
With regards to your second paragraph, the good thing about homeschooling is that the parents are completely responsible. They can teach their children whatever they want. Some may teach badly, some may teach well, but from the moment of conception children are their responsibility; it's quite artificial to then place them in schools from the age of 5 to 18 as if suddenly the state is responsible for their children's education.
You can't possibly be serious.
First of all, tons of families don't raise their children until the age of 5 - they have to look for creches or nannies which eventually transition into schools, which then transition into universities. Secondly, are you saying that if a kid is born to some trailertrash fuck-up parents, it's okay for them to grow up with zero chance of ever achieving anything? If a couple of working-class parents without any background in education or sociology or whatever want to have a child, they should give up any hope of their kid ever doing anything else than following in their footsteps? If you're a single parent stuck in two jobs to pay the bills, you should give your child up for adoption because you can't teach them or take them out to socialize? How about families that live in the middle of an urban metropolis, like New York or Seoul, where there literally is no place for kids to play outside?
There is nothing good about making parents 'completely responsible'. More often than not, parents make rather poor educators - even the best of parents tend to try and make what 'they' want out of their children, rather than truly respecting what their children want and need the most. Giving kids at least a basic 'foundation' education, with an introduction to various disciplines in a formal setting is not a bad thing. It's not often done well - hence my comment about improving schools - but in most cases, it is for everyone's benefit.
One more point to consider;
People saying schooling is bad due to so and so, what makes you think that your parents would make better educators than the teachers you had in school?
School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
On January 09 2014 06:25 Thrill wrote: I would rather stab myself in the arm, multiple times with a rusty fork than carry on a discussion like this with some random person online.
Fact of the matter remains, you can foster unique fairy creatures or accept the rules of the game we all play.
School isn't for learning quantifiable knowledge. I learned pretty much jack shit from early school years, got all of it from home. The value of school is learning to deal with idiots. Not everyone is as great as your family and sooner or later you're gonna have to confront them if you choose to live in society. You deal with teachers, other kids and most importantly the system. You can't have your parents, books or movies tell you how the system works, you have to live it before you can make an informed decision on whether you want to accept it.
Choice is a privilege and the choice of accepting society in particular. Society is built around the idea of providing a safe environment for children to grow without the constant attention of their parents. Children happen. They're born and when they are - they impact the ability of their parent(s) making a choice in regards to society.
All this is of course irrelevant to your little facebook discussion. That numbskull questions the point of having schools at all. Well, believe me, if i learned a lot from having to deal with the idiots, that's nothing compared to the absolute necessity of the idiots being exposed to other sources of authority than their even more hopeless parents. We're talking the worst form of parents here. The ones who have given up and embraced some pseudo-suicidal logic of life being one long slope down toward inevitable disappointment. The one dream they put in the heads of their sons (yeah, daughters are just downright given up on form the get-go, though that often serves them well as the complete absurdity of their parents defeatism and disproportion to reality of their situation may cause an earlier break from family) is a haphazard vision of becoming a sports star.
Now most of these kids will live out the self fulfilling prophecy they were born into, but some can be saved thanks to the miracle of school. Actually this pretty much only applies to daughters as well. While young boys may come to terms with the idea of school being a prison, time that has to be served before entering into brief military service followed by a life doing construction work, their endurance may be explained by comradery. As others around them follow the same path, it must be sane. Girls however are presented with no vision of a future whatsoever and may either be born with looks sufficient to fit the vision of becoming a young mother and house wife. Or not - in which case rather than following a beaten track along with their "bro's" they question what they want to do with their lives. School is often one way out for them. What will be their way out of home schooling?
My arm is getting quite sore from the fork now so i'll stop writing/stabbing but yeah in conclusion - you've basically been arguing over the concept of rumspringa. Is there potential for a happy life being Amish? Sure, but choosing to limit ourselves is choosing a mild form of lobotomy, it's a choice that's perhaps ok to make for yourself but not for your kids.
Rumspringa is not a functioning concept. Nor is homeschooling. They're denial at the expense of your children, limiting their most precious gift and your main responsibility to grant them as a parent - choice.
I don't understand why people are so quick to say that school's purpose is to teach you how to deal with idiots or put up with crap. People are going to learn about that no matter what; we've been learning it for thousands of years so far, and universal education has only been a popular concept for a couple centuries. I think the principle focus of school should be education, above anything else. Not sports, not school spirit, not teaching you how the real world works. Unfortunately, most people don't really care about education, and schools are also incredibly important in many communities for the welfare opportunities they provide (I don't say this in opposition, but in acknowledgement) in the form of transportation, daycare, and free food.
Obviously homeschooling is not for every family, or even for most families. I actually think that it should be encouraged that parents send their kids to school, if only because the average person is retarded, and the only way their children might not be retarded is if they are taught by someone less retarded than their parents. Nobody is advocating that everybody homeschool, but rather that homeschooling is a way to escape from the stupidity that you mentioned, like girls not having futures and men only being able to be sports stars.
I've always been great at learning, but I'm horrible at school. From my experience, students who are great at learning but bad at school loved classes that were graded heavily on the test and hated classes that were graded heavily on assignments, because if you genuinely understood the material there was very little chance you would fuck up on a test but having to suffer through the 'busy work' of assignments was a chore, while students who did really well at school wanted assignment heavy classes because the assignments were garunteed points if you spent the time to do them and lessened the 'randomness' of studying for a test (oh god, nothing I studied was on the test!).
??? Perhaps our school environments are different but I have never experienced this. Maybe it is because I go to an all-male school with mostly male teachers, but most of my courses have been at least 50% (usually more like 60-70%) of your final grade determined by the tests and quizzes you take throughout the year + midterms and finals. I get what you mean about tests, and I don't know what kind of busy work you are talking about, but honestly most classes are 0min - 30min per night of work, and I take the hardest classes possible. There is reading, but not too much. I always feel like the tests have made sense and the smart people (not the "OMG I studied for like four hours" -> 82 kind of people) have always made good grades. TBH it is kind of a trope for young males on the internet to think that they are these as yet undiscovered geniuses destined to be great physicists. I have yet to meet these "geniuses" who somehow do not manage to get good grades in HS in real life.
What a great discussion! I voted in agreement with Red more than Blue, but right about now I actually am not sure and find myself thinking there isn't enough evidence to support either side.
Some people in this thread have commented on how unschooling has worked out great for them; that's obviously great, but I think the real question is how true is it in general?
For some intelligent, self-sufficient kids, who read about a wide variety of subjects (or simply *know* what they want to be and have a passion for it), school may easily slow their development. And if they're able to join clubs and organizations that make up for the loss of social interactions at school, then there really is no problem. But there is also the equal possibility that some kids may not have the drive to learn and explore a variety of subjects, who may prefer to enclose themselves and play games and not learn certain fundamental skills that will be required when they get older and need to start supporting themselves. They may discover they want to pursue certain studies and find themselves unprepared. Additionally, if they tend to be shy, introverted children, it may be much more difficult to make friends outside of a school setting, in spite of the bullying that may be present.
I think both sides should acknowledge that there is a place for schooling and unschooling, and it really depends on the child and their parents.
It is a very difficult question to answer whether schooling is still necessary. We would need to study kids in general, and see how capable they truly are when left to explore the world on their own. In theory if they are capable (i.e. they expose themselves to a wide variety of subjects, and learn well on their own or with a tutor), and can find ways to socialize outside of a traditional school setting, then unschooling is better when compared to formal schooling (ignoring formal requirements needed to gain entrance into university - I think the question being asked is more fundamental).
But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).
I guess to finish off, what we can say about school as it exists today is that it is a safe bedrock, and that kids are more or less guaranteed to gain the necessary tools to work and communicate in the world.
Whether its necessary really requires scientific study and understanding of how capable children are. And if they are capable, I think we need to make schools much more open and flexible for the student.
On January 09 2014 07:13 radscorpion9 wrote: But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).
This is definitely the best option, if not just for the sole reason that it's extremely common now that both parents will be working. This takes the responsibility out of the hands of the parents and into the hands of trained professionals. If class sizes were a lot smaller and curriculum could be significantly more flexible to meet the needs of students individually then school would be better than homeschooling in almost every case.
Of course this is miles away from where our current school system is, and is a very ideal scenario and may not really be economically feasible unless it's a very expensive private school.
I am in favor of homeschooling by competent parents over the current school system, but as far as the government's role in it: they should be improving the school system much more rapidly than the embarrassment of what is happening at the moment (hint: standardized tests are not the solution).
On January 09 2014 07:13 radscorpion9 wrote: What a great discussion! I voted in agreement with Red more than Blue, but right about now I actually am not sure and find myself thinking there isn't enough evidence to support either side.
Some people in this thread have commented on how unschooling has worked out great for them; that's obviously great, but I think the real question is how true is it in general?
For some intelligent, self-sufficient kids, who read about a wide variety of subjects, school may easily slow their development. And if they're able to join clubs and organizations that make up for the loss of social interactions at school, then there really is no problem. But there is also the equal possibility that some kids may not have the drive to learn and explore a variety of subjects, who may prefer to enclose themselves and play games and not learn certain fundamental skills that will be required when they get older and need to start supporting themselves. They may discover they want to pursue certain studies and find themselves unprepared. Additionally, if they tend to be shy, introverted children, it may be much more difficult to make friends outside of a school setting, in spite of the bullying that may be present.
I think both sides should acknowledge that there is a place for schooling and unschooling, and it really depends on the child and their parents.
It is a very difficult question to answer whether schooling is still necessary. We would need to study kids in general, and see how capable they truly are when left to explore the world on their own. In theory if they are capable (i.e. they are exposed to a wide variety of subjects, and learn well on their own or with a tutor), and can find ways to socialize outside of a traditional school setting, then unschooling is better when compared to formal schooling (ignoring formal requirements needed to gain entrance into university - I think the question being asked is more fundamental).
But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).
I guess to finish off, what we can say about school as it exists today is that it is a safe bedrock, and that kids are more or less guaranteed to gain the necessary tools to work and communicate in the world.
Whether its necessary really requires scientific study and understanding of how capable children are. And if they are capable, I think we need to make schools much more open and flexible for the student.
I completely agree with this. The main problem is choice I think, we just don't have it.
There are a few problems in education that need to be fixed
- Children need more flexibility in schools, right now every child is treated like an item on a manufacturing line. Only problem is kids learn different things at different rates and classes soon become either too boring or too difficult for them, causing them to hate it.
- All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
- We need to stop using grades as a metric. The biggest problem with the "social" schools you talked about is that the students almost inevitably end up having worse test scores compared to other schools. So even if it is more beneficial later in life, a lot of parents will freak out and pull their kids out and put them back in traditional schools.
I would also support an alternative to testing generally . I think its necessary at the moment to have some way of gauging development, but it would be great if we didn't place so much stress on one or two big exams. Europe once again trying out things in this area...I always forget which country though
On January 09 2014 07:30 radscorpion9 wrote: I would also support an alternative to testing generally . I think its necessary at the moment to have some way of gauging development, but it would be great if we didn't place so much stress on one or two big exams. Europe once again trying out things in this area...I always forget which country though
I personally love tests since I excel at them, but I agree that school needs to be changed to play to the strengths of different people rather than just rewarding people who learn and demonstrate knowledge in a particular way.
On January 09 2014 07:26 sluggaslamoo wrote: - All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
Schools are not about 'real world applicability' - they're about showing you the basics in a variety of disciplines so you can make a better choice for further education. Heck, even colleges / universities don't really teach anything 'directly applicable' to workplace tasks, that's really not the point of it at all. Neither is teaching people to make 6 figure sums - you do realize that the world needs other things than an army of Steve Jobses, surely.
On January 09 2014 07:13 radscorpion9 wrote: What a great discussion! I voted in agreement with Red more than Blue, but right about now I actually am not sure and find myself thinking there isn't enough evidence to support either side.
Some people in this thread have commented on how unschooling has worked out great for them; that's obviously great, but I think the real question is how true is it in general?
For some intelligent, self-sufficient kids, who read about a wide variety of subjects, school may easily slow their development. And if they're able to join clubs and organizations that make up for the loss of social interactions at school, then there really is no problem. But there is also the equal possibility that some kids may not have the drive to learn and explore a variety of subjects, who may prefer to enclose themselves and play games and not learn certain fundamental skills that will be required when they get older and need to start supporting themselves. They may discover they want to pursue certain studies and find themselves unprepared. Additionally, if they tend to be shy, introverted children, it may be much more difficult to make friends outside of a school setting, in spite of the bullying that may be present.
I think both sides should acknowledge that there is a place for schooling and unschooling, and it really depends on the child and their parents.
It is a very difficult question to answer whether schooling is still necessary. We would need to study kids in general, and see how capable they truly are when left to explore the world on their own. In theory if they are capable (i.e. they are exposed to a wide variety of subjects, and learn well on their own or with a tutor), and can find ways to socialize outside of a traditional school setting, then unschooling is better when compared to formal schooling (ignoring formal requirements needed to gain entrance into university - I think the question being asked is more fundamental).
But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).
I guess to finish off, what we can say about school as it exists today is that it is a safe bedrock, and that kids are more or less guaranteed to gain the necessary tools to work and communicate in the world.
Whether its necessary really requires scientific study and understanding of how capable children are. And if they are capable, I think we need to make schools much more open and flexible for the student.
All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
Math geeks don't make six figure wages? This is news to me.
I've always been great at learning, but I'm horrible at school. From my experience, students who are great at learning but bad at school loved classes that were graded heavily on the test and hated classes that were graded heavily on assignments, because if you genuinely understood the material there was very little chance you would fuck up on a test but having to suffer through the 'busy work' of assignments was a chore, while students who did really well at school wanted assignment heavy classes because the assignments were garunteed points if you spent the time to do them and lessened the 'randomness' of studying for a test (oh god, nothing I studied was on the test!).
??? Perhaps our school environments are different but I have never experienced this. Maybe it is because I go to an all-male school with mostly male teachers, but most of my courses have been at least 50% (usually more like 60-70%) of your final grade determined by the tests and quizzes you take throughout the year + midterms and finals. I get what you mean about tests, and I don't know what kind of busy work you are talking about, but honestly most classes are 0min - 30min per night of work, and I take the hardest classes possible. There is reading, but not too much. I always feel like the tests have made sense and the smart people (not the "OMG I studied for like four hours" -> 82 kind of people) have always made good grades. TBH it is kind of a trope for young males on the internet to think that they are these as yet undiscovered geniuses destined to be great physicists. I have yet to meet these "geniuses" who somehow do not manage to get good grades in HS in real life.
Maybe I phrased that poorly / too generally, but it seems like you assumed when I said 'liked' I meant 'did well in'. I actually got pretty good grades throughout high school and did most of the assignments ect, I just hated classes that were 50% test 50% assignments because it meant just learning / knowing wasn't enough for me in that class, I had to spend lots of time putting that on paper even though my teachers knew I knew it. Generally speaking people who thought about what they learned in class beyond memorizing it for the next test weren't afraid when the final tests rolled around because they had actually learned the material.
i don't think you should tell people you are red before they vote, it creates bias.
i do think that with the internet and proper motivation, children will develop more useful life skills that are suited for the 21st century workforce than those who are currently participating in the education system out of forcible necessity. however, i do think that blue's ideals are a little extreme and he is walking a fine line between home schooling and negligence. i believe that most children stand to gain more from school than the select few that would benefit from being outside of school.
one thing in particular that i have always pondered was the effect of sleep deprivation on adolescents. teenagers are growing and it's natural for them sleep upwards of 9 hours - this is a biological fact. i don't remember any student from high school that got more than 9 hours of sleep on weekdays. they would have to go to bed before 10.
Blue could be entirely correct and his children will do fine, but there are plenty of people who sound like blue whose children don't do well socially and will be lacking many important skills. I have an anecdote about a friend to support my claim, but the specifics don't matter, only that it is an anecdote.
On January 09 2014 07:13 radscorpion9 wrote: What a great discussion! I voted in agreement with Red more than Blue, but right about now I actually am not sure and find myself thinking there isn't enough evidence to support either side.
Some people in this thread have commented on how unschooling has worked out great for them; that's obviously great, but I think the real question is how true is it in general?
For some intelligent, self-sufficient kids, who read about a wide variety of subjects, school may easily slow their development. And if they're able to join clubs and organizations that make up for the loss of social interactions at school, then there really is no problem. But there is also the equal possibility that some kids may not have the drive to learn and explore a variety of subjects, who may prefer to enclose themselves and play games and not learn certain fundamental skills that will be required when they get older and need to start supporting themselves. They may discover they want to pursue certain studies and find themselves unprepared. Additionally, if they tend to be shy, introverted children, it may be much more difficult to make friends outside of a school setting, in spite of the bullying that may be present.
I think both sides should acknowledge that there is a place for schooling and unschooling, and it really depends on the child and their parents.
It is a very difficult question to answer whether schooling is still necessary. We would need to study kids in general, and see how capable they truly are when left to explore the world on their own. In theory if they are capable (i.e. they are exposed to a wide variety of subjects, and learn well on their own or with a tutor), and can find ways to socialize outside of a traditional school setting, then unschooling is better when compared to formal schooling (ignoring formal requirements needed to gain entrance into university - I think the question being asked is more fundamental).
But then a new question arises - what if we significantly modify school to be more of a place where students can socialize, and where they are free to learn whatever they want, and when they decide on an area, there is an educator available to instruct that student? Then that would be even better than unschooling, and would become the new ideal choice (I know some of these schools already exist in Europe and elsewhere).
I guess to finish off, what we can say about school as it exists today is that it is a safe bedrock, and that kids are more or less guaranteed to gain the necessary tools to work and communicate in the world.
Whether its necessary really requires scientific study and understanding of how capable children are. And if they are capable, I think we need to make schools much more open and flexible for the student.
All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
Math geeks don't make six figure wages? This is news to me.
On January 09 2014 07:26 sluggaslamoo wrote: - All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
Schools are not about 'real world applicability' - they're about showing you the basics in a variety of disciplines so you can make a better choice for further education. Heck, even colleges / universities don't really teach anything 'directly applicable' to workplace tasks, that's really not the point of it at all. Neither is teaching people to make 6 figure sums - you do realize that the world needs other things than an army of Steve Jobses, surely.
I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.
Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.
Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.
Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".
Actually if Steve Jobs just entered a high school and offered a class, you could be your damn <whatever> that almost every student would be signing up for it, and almost every student would be soaking up every word of his like a sponge. He wouldn't have the so called problems that a lot of other teachers complain about.
Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
On January 09 2014 07:57 sluggaslamoo wrote: I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.
Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.
Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.
Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".
Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
If you don't mind me quoting a blogger I like, I think you've got a good point but I think it would be improved by reading his post about teaching.
An excerpt:
Scott Alexander wrote: I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.
And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.
By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.
Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”
To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be...
On January 09 2014 07:57 sluggaslamoo wrote: I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.
Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.
Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.
Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".
Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
If you don't mind me quoting a blogger I like, I think you've got a good point but I think it would be improved by reading his post about teaching.
Scott Alexander wrote: I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.
And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.
By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.
Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”
To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be...
From the excerpt I feel like I can gauge that he is making the same mistakes that every other wannabe inspiring teacher is making. As a coach of soccer players who are only there because of their parents I have also made this kind of mistake, thinking that I could "inspire" them to play.
It looks like an interesting read though, and I will further comment once I have read the whole thing.
Actually I want to make another post because I'm not done yet.
It is my theory that, with a few exceptions, schools are only as valuable as the kids going in. By that I mean that funding really doesn't make a difference, and while teachers can make a difference, the vast majority of them won't. Consider failing school districts - some of the best funded school districts in the US are also the most failing ones, like Camden NJ. Also, from personal experience, the smartest people I know generally come from families that are very educated and run by smart parents or from families that push their children to succeed, even if they are not wealthy. As an example, of the 8 people who became National Merit Semifinalists at my high school (top .5% on a national test): + Show Spoiler +
2 People had fathers who were medical specialists + stay at home moms. 1 person had a bigshot lawyer dad and a stay at home mom 1 person had a bigshot lawyer dad and a pretty important lawyer mom 1 person had both parents as pharmacists 1 person had a mechanical engineer father and a stay at home mom. Super strict parents Don't know about the other two
NMSF is not the end all be all of intelligence, but it does measure how good you are at reading, writing, and math, which I assume correlates pretty highly with intelligence.
In fact, I am pretty convinced that while genetics probably does play a role in intelligence, intelligence is more a result of how smart the people you learn from are. In that case, if you are someone who thinks that you are smarter than the average teacher (no offense to teachers, but the teaching profession typically does not attract the same kind of people that law, medicine, banking, etc. do, though if the pay for banking vs. teaching were switched society would be much better off) it would make sense that you could offer more to your children by teaching them yourself than if teachers taught them.
That is not to even mention the greatest benefit of homeschooling - a specifically tailored education. I know plenty of people who probably could have skipped one or two grades completely (beyond AP classes, which are the current course ceilings at most HSes), just because they were generally smart and equally interested across subjects. I also know people who struggle with writing but love math. Even if they are not the best at math, they could greatly benefit from an accelerated track. Some of you all subscribe to the myth that private school is somehow much more flexible than public school - I've gone to private school all my life, and in my opinion that is just not true. You have aptitude for math and could probably finish Calc 1-4 and Linear Algebra while in HS? Rofl, guess you'll have to make do with AP Calculus BC. You really want to be a doctor? AP Bio and an anatomy course are the closest you're going to get. Not to mention the AP CS course is the biggest joke ever. CS preparation and aptitude has so much variance at the HS level that the AP course is simply lacking. AP courses are better than not having them at all, but they delude school administrations into believing that the school offers a sufficiently advanced curriculum for all them fancy book-folk. If you homeschool, you are limited only by yourself: by the breadth and depth of material you can teach your children.
If you couldn't tell, I want to homeschool my children. None of this unschooling shit, just like an actual school where I can guarantee that the teacher will always care about the student and where you can go beyond the absolute no-negotiation ceiling of Calculus II in 12th grade or only introductory Java.
On January 09 2014 07:26 sluggaslamoo wrote: - All subjects, and I mean ALL OF THEM (except for the last 2 years of high school), have no real world applicability. Maths geeks can yell to their hearts content but how many of them make 6 figure sums and can market like Steve Jobs? This makes the classes seem completely pointless to students.
Schools are not about 'real world applicability' - they're about showing you the basics in a variety of disciplines so you can make a better choice for further education. Heck, even colleges / universities don't really teach anything 'directly applicable' to workplace tasks, that's really not the point of it at all. Neither is teaching people to make 6 figure sums - you do realize that the world needs other things than an army of Steve Jobses, surely.
Actuarial sciences, computer science (people are going to get mad at me but in many ways this is a programming/software development degree), lots of engineering disciplines, business degrees (maybe not a thing in Germany but huge in the US), medicine, pharmacy, nursing (why the fuck is this a degree), law - what is the point of these degrees if not to get a specific, well paying job?
On January 09 2014 07:57 sluggaslamoo wrote: I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.
Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.
Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.
Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".
Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
If you don't mind me quoting a blogger I like, I think you've got a good point but I think it would be improved by reading his post about teaching.
Scott Alexander wrote: I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.
And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.
By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.
Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”
To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be...
I haven't read the link but only what you posted, and I wonder how it would be different if the class sizes were smaller, like 5-10 students. It sounds like he was teaching an entire highschool class of 20+ like standard, where every student already feels so detached from the teacher, any attempt at reaching out will just meet cold stares since it's so awkward for one student out of so many to respond in that manner. It's the same reason why sometimes you'll have that funny teacher in a big class and even when they say something you recognize is funny and would laugh at in most other situations, the most reaction you'll get in a class is a slight snicker.
On January 09 2014 08:06 Chocolate wrote: Actually I want to make another post because I'm not done yet.
It is my theory that, with a few exceptions, schools are only as valuable as the kids going in. By that I mean that funding really doesn't make a difference, and while teachers can make a difference, the vast majority of them won't. Consider failing school districts - some of the best funded school districts in the US are also the most failing ones, like Camden NJ.
not that it isn't true that schools quality is basically determined by pupil quality, but the perhaps reason well-funded school districts are often failing isn't that funding causes failing but that many programs direct extra funding to failing programs. also there's plenty of not-really-on-the-books funding like parents donating tons of money to science boosters etc, at least at my home school district. just watch out for which direction that causality arrow points in your directionality correlation.
On January 09 2014 07:57 sluggaslamoo wrote: I've been in school and university, I know what they are about, and its bad.
Steve Jobs talent was about vision, recognizing talent, and amazing communication skills. These are the most important skills for almost any industry.
Rather than schooling a bunch of dropouts who can't get a job because they don't know how to work effectively, if we taught everybody the skills that Steve Jobs had, we would have a lot less problems. I'm not saying that the world needs a legion of Steve Jobs'.
Surely if a teacher came out and said, "hey I'm going to teach you how to become successful in life and make lots of money", surely students would be a lot more motivated than, "so today we are going to learn algebra".
Motivation is the primary driver for learning, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
If you don't mind me quoting a blogger I like, I think you've got a good point but I think it would be improved by reading his post about teaching.
An excerpt:
Scott Alexander wrote: I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.
And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.
By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.
Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”
To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be...
I haven't read the link but only what you posted, and I wonder how it would be different if the class sizes were smaller, like 5-10 students. It sounds like he was teaching an entire highschool class of 20+ like standard, where every student already feels so detached from the teacher, any attempt at reaching out will just meet cold stares since it's so awkward for one student out of so many to respond in that manner. It's the same reason why sometimes you'll have that funny teacher in a big class and even when they say something you recognize is funny and would laugh at in most other situations, the most reaction you'll get in a class is a slight snicker.
I think it more or less goes to my original point of flexibilty. The problem is that the kids who want to learn are mixed with the kids who don't give a shit. Children, in a desire to fit in, will most often than not try to fall to the lowest common denominator, so even some of the high potential students will shy away from trying.
You could have a class of 100 students, and if they were all keen on learning english it wouldn't be a problem having 1 teacher.
On January 09 2014 08:06 Chocolate wrote: Actually I want to make another post because I'm not done yet.
It is my theory that, with a few exceptions, schools are only as valuable as the kids going in. By that I mean that funding really doesn't make a difference, and while teachers can make a difference, the vast majority of them won't. Consider failing school districts - some of the best funded school districts in the US are also the most failing ones, like Camden NJ.
not that it isn't true that schools quality is basically determined by pupil quality, but the perhaps reason well-funded school districts are often failing isn't that funding causes failing but that many programs direct extra funding to failing programs. also there's plenty of not-really-on-the-books funding like parents donating tons of money to science boosters etc, at least at my home school district. just watch out for which direction that causality arrow points in your directionality correlation.
You are right about causality, but there are kids who have essentially gone through most of their education getting this kind of funding (this article is not about a change but the current situation), with little sign of improvement. I live in historically one of the most segregated cities in the US, and this is also a phenomenon here - the schools that always receive the most funding are the inner city ones with very poor student bodies. As I would expect, in my city an experimental free (independent of public school system) boarding school for boys has done particularly well, which supports my hypothesis that it is mostly the background - family life and all that - that affects how academically inclined you are, as these children are spending less time with their uneducated parents and spending more time with their teachers / staff. I can probably dig an article up as a source but it would take a little while.
I go to a private school. Tuition is I think 11000 for most. Top 5% of students get 2700 off, and there is 2m financial aid available for 1300 students (unsurprisingly lots of football players are on "aid"... purely coincidentally). We get over .5% of all the nation's perfect scorers on the ACT, average a ton of NMSF (20 last year, 8 this year), etc. on a lot less money than Camden schools, and actually on less money than the average schools in our area. I think it really is all about the home-life, and I really think we should consider public boarding schools for low income kids across the country, and reconsider how we treat money and education.
That is another misconception about education, that it is only for the purpose of preparing you for university/work/your career. An education should be about much more than that. EDIT
If you homeschool, you are limited only by yourself: by the breadth and depth of material you can teach your children.
No, actually, you're limited by the books you use. My mother doesn't have any mastery over calculus or advanced mathematics but she still taught me it, via books which did understand it and have a mastery over it.
It's fantastic that a teacher like yourself is passionate and open minded enough about education to have a discussion with someone who has the position of Blue. If you would like to explore the issue of unschooling a bit more, I would recommend two authors John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. Both were school teachers for many decades so they speak from personal experience. I recommend Instead of Education from Holt and Dumbing us Down by John Gatto. Those two flesh out the arguments against compulsory education and I think it will give you a much better overview of what the opposite thinks.
On January 09 2014 08:25 Birdie wrote: That is another misconception about education, that it is only for the purpose of preparing you for university/work/your career. An education should be about much more than that. EDIT
If you homeschool, you are limited only by yourself: by the breadth and depth of material you can teach your children.
No, actually, you're limited by the books you use. My mother doesn't have any mastery over calculus or advanced mathematics but she still taught me it, via books which did understand it and have a mastery over it.
Also a lot of people are forgetting about the internet, which is probably the best source of information for almost anything.
Many of the best or most aspiring 3d modelers for instance get tutoring over the web via live stream teaching sessions.
On January 09 2014 05:11 calh wrote: - You don't have to enjoy something to do it, and in fact most recognition and success can only come from doing things you don't enjoy. This fact is often lost on children who mostly interact with their immediate family, who keep cheering them on for being "good" at their favorite thing when they are in the mood to do it.
I guess you learned this great truth of life in school, didn't you? It's nevertheless hard to blame you for such ignorance, because this is what the current mass education system is mainly deisgned to do - to force the kids into thinking that the lack of enjoyment is a natural state, to make them "grown adults", which is a well engineered euphemism for supression of indivuduality and conformance to the system of the society. Threre are actually more instances in this thread when people put something like "learing to deal with how things work" as a plus of school, while it is the complete oposite - imagine if now we make a whole generation not go to school and the great values of hard but completely unnecessary work, rigid daily schedule and in general most of what makes up the contemporary corporate world will be lost forever. Wouldn't that be a much nicer world? (Unintuitve Google keyword: "bullshit jobs" for more reading in this direction.)
No, I certainly didn't take part in your mass education system, whatever it is supposedly designed to do. And what I said hasn't got anything to do with the corporate world or any of the shiny ideals you espouse, so don't put up that strawman either.
On the other hand most of the successful people I know of certainly didn't get there by doing fun stuff. In all walks of life, following one's passion usually involves tons of boring drudgery or rage-inducing shit that you endure, because it's an unavoidable part of doing what you love. There are a number of people who genuinely enjoy most of what they have to do, and more power to them, but they are few and far between; and if you give children that kind of expectation, you just set the majority of them up for a rude awakening later on.
So his point is that when an educator raises children, does it right, and invests time and money into it, the kids can turn out alright?
He's right, what the hell do we need compulsory education and mandatory school attendance for? Surely, those parents who are too poor, too lazy, too stupid or too apathetic to give their children a thorough home-schooling all by themselves, covering around twelve different topics at the high school level, are a negligible minority.
I was home schooled until 16, and then went to study from 16-18 before going to university. It worked out really well for me. I got good grades and also learnt how to study independently. With modern online teaching it would be even easier now.
If you can afford to send your kids to one of the best private schools in the world (like Eton or something), they will probably get a better education. But home education is at least as good as 99% of schools. A huge amount of school time is crowd control, home education gives you so much more time to read and genuinely learn.
With regard to the social side, yes there are many things you can only learn at school, basically how to deal with idiots and large groups of people. But you don't need to waste 11 years of your life learning those things.
The case against going is even stronger if a kid has learning difficulties or psychological problems as most schools can't do enough to help.
On January 09 2014 10:31 Tal wrote: I was home schooled until 16, and then went to study from 16-18 before going to university. It worked out really well for me. I got good grades and also learnt how to study independently. With modern online teaching it would be even easier now.
If you can afford to send your kids to one of the best private schools in the world (like Eton or something), they will probably get a better education. But home education is at least as good as 99% of schools. A huge amount of school time is crowd control, home education gives you so much more time to read and genuinely learn.
With regard to the social side, yes there are many things you can only learn at school, basically how to deal with idiots and large groups of people. But you don't need to waste 11 years of your life learning those things.
The case against going is even stronger if a kid has learning difficulties or psychological problems as most schools can't do enough to help.
Exactly, what does this do for a kid with aspergers or a someone who's been terribly bullied?
This can have an adverse affect on every aspect of their lives and turn an otherwise successful person into a dreary mess. Also communication changes drastically between childhood and adulthood.
In middleschool you learn how to have a thick skin, screw around and "be popular" by being a clown to compensate for issues with self-esteem. None of this stuff matters late highschool and afterwards. You eventually become rational anyway as part of the bodies process of growing up and none of that stuff matters anymore. Not caring about what others thought about me was something that came naturally after a certain age, not something that I had to "learn".
On January 09 2014 10:13 SixStrings wrote: Wow, this really blows my mind.
So his point is that when an educator raises children, does it right, and invests time and money into it, the kids can turn out alright?
He's right, what the hell do we need compulsory education and mandatory school attendance for? Surely, those parents who are too poor, too lazy, too stupid or too apathetic to give their children a thorough home-schooling all by themselves, covering around twelve different topics at the high school level, are a negligible minority.
To play the devils advocate, I actually think its a majority. The issue is that for the kids that know exactly what they are doing, they still have to go to school, and all that does is hinder their success.
The people that are at the top are not generalists, they are the absolute experts of their field. Generalists fit into middle management, but the human race needs specialists to actually progress. Imagine if every doctor in the world had 10 years more education in their field, also add to the fact that children are much better learners than adults, its a big deal.
On January 09 2014 05:38 mizU wrote: The whole idea of taking hundreds of kids and forcing them to learn the same things the same way is terrible. That being said, no one seems interested in developing solutions for the kids that don't learn the way they're being taught, and are a lot more creative than schools will allow.
Doing such a thing is indeed terrible, but the past 50+ years of educational research have been specifically geared towards recognizing exactly this and working to develop solutions (contextualization of problems, representations of problems, problem solving, open-ended questions, collaborative learning, extensions and explorations, etc. etc. etc.) A good teacher already recognizes and utilizes these applications, although teachers may be pressed for time because of curricular pressure, which may occasionally force direct instruction.
Holy copy pasta batman. Also this argument sounds like it was cooked up by a 15 year old who thought s/he was way too smart for school. There are a surprisingly large amount of people in the US that don't have basic literacy skills. If education wasn't compulsory, a far larger segment of the population would be that way. I think there is a decent argument to be made for there to be more options as far as technical high schools (someone who wants to be a plumber maybe doesn't need to learn world history), but it seems sort of silly to think that kindergarten through middle school could be easily ignored for most kids.
Also children are at a strange place when it comes to consenting to certain things. They're really too young to be making decisions about themselves and their future, but we also want to protect them from the potentially bad decisionmaking of their parents and guardians. Compulsory education ensures that kids don't get unduly screwed because their parent thinks that education isn't worth the effort.
On January 09 2014 06:40 Cheren wrote: To me there's no shittier feeling in the world than being forced to try to teach an unmotivated student. I don't think it's realistic to let unmotivated students just not show up, but it would provide a much better experience for teachers and motivated students alike.
I agree, but I also think it's the job of the parents and teachers (working together) to find a way to generate interest in education for children.
On January 09 2014 07:03 sluggaslamoo wrote: School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
1. Out of curiosity, what's your profession?
2. Organizational behavior is often taught in schools, regardless of the class. Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together.
3. If you honestly think that people become teachers because it was a second-choice profession because they failed at becoming entrepreneurs, then you have a lot to learn, and it's dismissive, toxic, and ignorant opinions like yours that's the reason why educators lack appreciation in some cultures (yet are revered in the ones where their hard work and passion is recognized).
On January 09 2014 07:50 Terranist wrote: i don't think you should tell people you are red before they vote, it creates bias.
I thought about not explicitly saying what color I was, but then I realized it'd be hard to have a discussion afterwards... and pretty much anyone who's read my blogs (or my tagline below my posts) already know that I'm very passionate about education, being an educator, and possibly unmarried/ without kids. ::shrugs::
On January 09 2014 08:36 sths wrote: To Darkplasmaball.
It's fantastic that a teacher like yourself is passionate and open minded enough about education to have a discussion with someone who has the position of Blue. If you would like to explore the issue of unschooling a bit more, I would recommend two authors John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. Both were school teachers for many decades so they speak from personal experience. I recommend Instead of Education from Holt and Dumbing us Down by John Gatto. Those two flesh out the arguments against compulsory education and I think it will give you a much better overview of what the opposite thinks.
On January 09 2014 09:22 ninazerg wrote: REALLY? People are picking RED?
I didn't go to school and have no formal education, and I'm doing just fine. Look, I can write and everything.
9 x 8 = 72
I can do arithmetic.
The capital of Bolivia is La Paz.
I know geography.
The Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1814.
I know history.
Blue is completely right about everything, and I don't think public education should be mandatory.
I can never tell when you're being sarcastic, because you're always so crass and clever.
On January 09 2014 10:13 SixStrings wrote: Wow, this really blows my mind.
So his point is that when an educator raises children, does it right, and invests time and money into it, the kids can turn out alright?
He's right, what the hell do we need compulsory education and mandatory school attendance for? Surely, those parents who are too poor, too lazy, too stupid or too apathetic to give their children a thorough home-schooling all by themselves, covering around twelve different topics at the high school level, are a negligible minority.
To be fair, I don't think he was saying that everyone should homeschool their children. He just said that schooling shouldn't be mandatory for all children (so those parents who are particularly intellectual and affluent may be successful in raising their kids on their own without the help of a school, according to him).
Well, but when schooling isn't mandatory, you will breed excellence in a select few who have brilliant, involved parents and millions of illiterate kids who are as educated as your average Dark Age peasant.
Think of the horrible emotional and intellectual damage abusive parents, completely indifferent parents or Christian parents inflict on their children just in their free time. Would you really want some moron who thinks the world is 8000 years old be solely in charge of a kid's education?
On January 09 2014 07:03 sluggaslamoo wrote: School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
1. Out of curiosity, what's your profession?
2. Organizational behavior is often taught in schools, regardless of the class. Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together.
3. If you honestly think that people become teachers because it was a second-choice profession because they failed at becoming entrepreneurs, then you have a lot to learn, and it's dismissive, toxic, and ignorant opinions like yours that's the reason why educators lack appreciation in some cultures (yet are revered in the ones where their hard work and passion is recognized).
1. Software Developer. I started learning programming at 9 years old and never looked back. Although my father gave me a programming CD at that point because I told him I wanted to learn it (my father has no expertise in programming or IT in general). I was still only allowed to use the computer on weekends, so I'd learn how to program without a computer on my off days. I would spend almost all my spare time on learning how to program, although I had a balanced lifestyle, I did a lot of sports when I wasn't programming.
At 13 he would tell me to stop playing games, I never told him I made them. At the same time, I had 0 interest in any of my classes, and would receive a lot of detentions for turning up late to school and whatnot. I also did the minimal amount of homework, got shouted at by teachers for drawing in my book instead of doing class work.
At 15 I told him I wanted to become a games developer, he got really angry and told me its too difficult, ill never achieve it (or something along those lines). I was doing badly at school and apparently this was the cause. He moved me to a different school. I ended up skipping classes even more.
At 19 I pushed and pushed until finally he accepted it and now is very happy that I did it. Unfortunately Australia is a pretty bad place for doing games development, but I'm doing pretty well as a Ruby developer, its still my dream and slowly working towards getting there without having to work in a shitty environment like Activision's.
2. Can you give me an example of this? "Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together. " isn't really teaching organisation behaviour. If you've done organisational behaviour at university that is what I'm talking about. It has to be structured, group work doesn't really help in actually developing communication skills unless the participants are very mature.
3. I think you missed the point although it was dismissive, sorry. If I am taught by a maths teacher, I come to expect to be taught maths, not to be taught that I will fail in life if I don't learn it. I should be allowed to by choice, not partake in a class I have no interest in, if I can prove that I'm doing something worthwhile.
This choice wasn't given to me, instead of trying to find alternate strategies, instead I was treated as if there was something wrong with me. I don't need school teachers who don't have industry experience to teach me how my career is going to end up.
My friend had a similar experience who was a bit of a dropout, was told he would never amount to anything. Ended up becoming a fisherman and doing well for himself. This happens far too often when a teacher judges a student by his grades, and this only happens because the teacher has no real world experience and doesn't know any better himself.
Most teachers feel threatened when their students don't participate, and feel a need for "tough love" I guess, but what they are actually doing is getting revenge, and justifying it by feeling as if they are setting the student straight. I have barely met any teachers that haven't acted in this way.
I have plenty of anecdotes about awesome teachers, but that doesn't make me right; just as your anecdotes about shitty teachers don't make you right. It's just anecdotal. Now you're right it didn't work for you but does it scale?
On January 09 2014 11:41 Blazinghand wrote: I have plenty of anecdotes about awesome teachers, but that doesn't make me right; just as your anecdotes about shitty teachers don't make you right. It's just anecdotal. Now you're right it didn't work for you but does it scale?
What would your awesome teachers have done if you were a bad student who didn't give a shit?
The only way I can prove a point is through anecdotes though, that's the trouble. You can't discuss this issue with statistics, only from experiences.
You're right in that it doesn't mean I'm right, but what's right and wrong doesn't concern this debate, its about stating a case.
From what I can tell, there weren't any bad students who didn't give a shit. We had all kinds of sweet options so you could basically do whatever you want. It was an amazing school, really. I definitely knew a guy who didn't give a shit about the normal math, science etc offerings, so he sort of muddled through things for his core classes, and he took electives in robotics and programming that he really loved. The teachers were always pretty awesome and excited about the material, even when the students would be subpar (which happened at times). He ended up making friends on our robotics team that included my friends, which is how we came to know each other. We both work at start-ups now and are living the dream.
But again, anecdotes. For all I know, my school is the exception rather than the rule.
This isn't to say that the school didn't have bad teachers, but usually they only lasted for a year or so before they got removed, or moved on, or whatever.
On January 09 2014 07:03 sluggaslamoo wrote: School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
1. Out of curiosity, what's your profession?
2. Organizational behavior is often taught in schools, regardless of the class. Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together.
3. If you honestly think that people become teachers because it was a second-choice profession because they failed at becoming entrepreneurs, then you have a lot to learn, and it's dismissive, toxic, and ignorant opinions like yours that's the reason why educators lack appreciation in some cultures (yet are revered in the ones where their hard work and passion is recognized).
1. Software Developer. I started learning programming at 9 years old and never looked back. Although my father gave me a programming CD at that point because I told him I wanted to learn it (my father has no expertise in programming or IT in general). I was still only allowed to use the computer on weekends, so I'd learn how to program without a computer on my off days. I would spend almost all my spare time on learning how to program, although I had a balanced lifestyle, I did a lot of sports when I wasn't programming.
At 13 he would tell me to stop playing games, I never told him I made them. At the same time, I had 0 interest in any of my classes, and would receive a lot of detentions for turning up late to school and whatnot. I also did the minimal amount of homework, got shouted at by teachers for drawing in my book instead of doing class work.
At 15 I told him I wanted to become a games developer, he got really angry and told me its too difficult, ill never achieve it (or something along those lines). I was doing badly at school and apparently this was the cause. He moved me to a different school. I ended up skipping classes even more.
At 19 I pushed and pushed until finally he accepted it and now is very happy that I did it. Unfortunately Australia is a pretty bad place for doing games development, but I'm doing pretty well as a Ruby developer, its still my dream and slowly working towards getting there without having to work in a shitty environment like Activision's.
2. Can you give me an example of this? "Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together. " isn't really teaching organisation behaviour. If you've done organisational behaviour at university that is what I'm talking about. It has to be structured, group work doesn't really help in actually developing communication skills unless the participants are very mature.
3. I think you missed the point although it was dismissive, sorry. If I am taught by a maths teacher, I come to expect to be taught maths, not to be taught that I will fail in life if I don't learn it. I should be allowed to by choice, not partake in a class I have no interest in, if I can prove that I'm doing something worthwhile.
This choice wasn't given to me, instead of trying to find alternate strategies, instead I was treated as if there was something wrong with me. I don't need school teachers who don't have industry experience to teach me how my career is going to end up.
My friend had a similar experience who was a bit of a dropout, was told he would never amount to anything. Ended up becoming a fisherman and doing well for himself. This happens far too often when a teacher judges a student by his grades, and this only happens because the teacher has no real world experience and doesn't know any better himself.
1. I think that's fantastic that things worked out for you and your programming career. It sounds like you achieved your dream and can comfortably say "I told you so" to anyone who doubted you. That being said, I think that for every successful one-track-mind-that-hates-school-but-still-makes-it-big-in-life, there are hundreds of one-track-minds-that-hate-school-and-go-nowhere-in-life. And obviously at age 9 you didn't really know what your future job would entail, but you were starting to develop the passion and that's what's important.
As far as school not helping you is concerned, I'm surprised that your school didn't offer any computer science, programming, or technology courses, as there have been even Advanced Placement courses aimed towards programming and computer science. And, obviously, majoring in these focuses in college could have helped you as well. You obviously got started on this at an age earlier than most, which is why I suppose taking relevant classes in school appeal to others even if you think you wouldn't have learned anything from taking them.
2. Understanding the psychological and sociological aspects of students in a classroom is a pretty big part of being a successful teacher. All educators end up taking a class or two on educational psychology, and we end up reading plenty of research on sociocultural and constructivist approaches to teaching. Utilizing these perspectives tends to help not only with classroom management, but also making sure that the students become as successful as possible (by learning from both the teacher and from peers because the classroom is set up in a structured way that's receptive to optimizing educational experiences). Obviously, as you pointed out, student maturity is desired, but that's going to be regardless of how the class is set up.
3. I agree with you that teachers should not be saying you'll fail in life if you don't ace their course, or that something's wrong with you. It's a silly thing for them to say, and I'm sure most teachers don't say this. It's unfortunate that your father and apparently some of your teachers rejected your passion for programming, although to be fair, a responsible teacher isn't going to tell you "Don't worry about trying in my class; I see your irrelevant passion is important to you so don't feel the need to complete any of my assignments" either. Keep in mind you were a kid who turned out to be an exception to the rule, and it's not a bad idea to still be well-rounded academically anyway. And if you don't want to be, that's fine too... but your teachers still have a job to do, and that involves trying to make their students competent in their subject matter.
I think school is more about learning to sit on a chair and be quiet for 7 hours every day. It's the basis for a coherent society. Children learning stuff is just a plus
Your friend is right and it's not even close. Worse, I almost couldn't get to the end because I felt like you weren't fully engaging with what he was saying and it was getting incredibly frustrating.
It's not about whether teachers do a good job or not. The organizational constraints are such that a kid under the supervision of caring and responsible parents will almost always do better than one who goes to school.
I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
*Academically. I would argue most school systems fail them even more socially and emotionally. How many kids miss school because they fear for their safety (unsourced google search turns up 160,000 per day in the US). The idea that kids should be forced to go to a place where their physical safety isn't guaranteed is perverse.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: Your friend is right and it's not even close. Worse, I almost couldn't get to the end because I felt like you weren't fully engaging with what he was saying and it was getting incredibly frustrating.
It's not about whether teachers do a good job or not. The organizational constraints are such that a kid under the supervision of caring and responsible parents will almost always do better than one who goes to school.
Why do you think this is the case? I tried to explain during my conversation with him why I disagree with that conjecture, when talking about how there are far more opportunities academically and socially if a child is allowed to go to school, especially since they can still come home to "caring and responsible parents" even if they spent time in school. Having good parents and having a good school experience are not dichotomous situations.
I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
I know plenty of ways that politics and schools are failing students' educational experiences, but I know many more ways that students are actually learning (not just content and procedural knowledge, but also reinforcing problem solving abilities and having collaborative social experiences), and I think we'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say we shouldn't send our kids to school because of the occasional bullshit that appears (welcome to the real world, although schools are still much more cushioned than adulthood). As Salazarz said, schools need to be improved, not removed.
*Academically. I would argue most school systems fail them even more socially and emotionally. How many kids miss school because they fear for their safety (unsourced google search turns up 160,000 per day in the US). The idea that kids should be forced to go to a place where their physical safety isn't guaranteed is perverse.
And I'm sure that 95% of those kids live in poor, urban districts where the gangs and violent kids they fear are only slightly less likely to show up at their broken home and shank them. Schools should be safe havens for children, but if a school is situated in an already unfortunate environment, it's pretty hard to make safety a sure thing. Most teachers aren't ninjas
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
*Academically. I would argue most school systems fail them even more socially and emotionally. How many kids miss school because they fear for their safety (unsourced google search turns up 160,000 per day in the US). The idea that kids should be forced to go to a place where their physical safety isn't guaranteed is perverse.
Where the fuck is a child's safety guaranteed? Be serious man.
People have this insane rhetoric that since the centrally controlled education systems all over the world are failing to be adapted to every single specific child's particular needs, which from a practical standpoint is fucking hilarious by all standards. Do you know who gets to have stuff tailored to their specific needs? Rich folks.
So it's perfectly normal that, until we manage to become a space-age civilization with abundant wealth and resources, we'll have teachers giving a standardized curriculum to a bunch of more-or-less interested kids. If you want the State to provide personalized education to some poor sap in buttfuck nowhere Kansas, you're crazy. And if you then complain that this kid's inability to get the specific class he needs means the education system has failed, then you're also a moron.
We do what we can with the resources that we have. State-run things like education have to be modest. Private education is expensive. So bitching incessantly is ridiculous.
Furthermore, even children who hate school and feel don't belong there tend to see their life improved by general knowledge and stuff. Now, given the scale of the US, you can cite large numbers of kids who dislike school, which for one doesn't mean that they don't benefit from it, but statistically speaking, education gives people a purely pragmatic competitive advantage.
Now, I don't know if I would support a parent's right not to send their kids to school. I'm in favor of liberty and freedom. However, I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
And now I'm making the argument from an individualist perspective but universal education is even easier to argue for from a collectivist's perspective. It's beneficial to have an educated society. But we vaguely already have that already. Being completely uneducated in an educated society is fucking hell.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: Your friend is right and it's not even close. Worse, I almost couldn't get to the end because I felt like you weren't fully engaging with what he was saying and it was getting incredibly frustrating.
It's not about whether teachers do a good job or not. The organizational constraints are such that a kid under the supervision of caring and responsible parents will almost always do better than one who goes to school.
Why do you think this is the case? I tried to explain during my conversation with him why I disagree with that conjecture, when talking about how there are far more opportunities academically and socially if a child is allowed to go to school,
Sure, he would have extra experiences in school. It would also take up a massive amount of time, so of course he would get something out of it. The question is, is that something more valuable than how he spends his time now. Indeed, the first part of the conversation should have been about trying to understand how those kids spend their time now, what kind of interactions they have, what they do or do not learn, etc.
You can't compare a known experience (going to school) to one you don't understand very well.
I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
I know plenty of ways that politics and schools are failing students' educational experiences, but I know many more ways that students are actually learning (not just content and procedural knowledge, but also reinforcing problem solving abilities and having collaborative social experiences), and I think we'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say we shouldn't send our kids to school because of the occasional bullshit that appears (welcome to the real world, although schools are still much more cushioned than adulthood). As Salazarz said, schools need to be improved, not removed.
As I said, for the amount of time they spend there they'd better be learning something. You should compare schools to the alternative, in this case the parent acting as sort of a mentor. In any case the debate was whether not going to school was better for some kids, not whether we should get rid of schools altogether. I don't think we should get rid of schools at this time. But yeah, skipping school would be better for plenty of kids.
BTW, I think you are overestimating the amount of learning that takes place. Take a look at PISA results. Not the rankings, but the actual questions. In math proficiency (for 15 year olds) meant solving a word problem requiring some algebra. It had a little more extraneous information and didn't follow the typical pattern but it was a simple word problem. In the US maybe 5% of students were proficient. Even in countries like Korea or Singapore it was less than 50%. Remember "proficient" just means: "Can use the most basic stuff we teach, in unfamiliar real life situations".
*Academically. I would argue most school systems fail them even more socially and emotionally. How many kids miss school because they fear for their safety (unsourced google search turns up 160,000 per day in the US). The idea that kids should be forced to go to a place where their physical safety isn't guaranteed is perverse.
And I'm sure that 95% of those kids live in poor, urban districts where the gangs and violent kids they fear are only slightly less likely to show up at their broken home and shank them. Schools should be safe havens for children, but if a school is situated in an already unfortunate environment, it's pretty hard to make safety a sure thing. Most teachers aren't ninjas
The teachers are not on trial here. The school system is. And these kids skipped school because of fear. So they thought it was worse than the alternative. Which, as you said can be pretty bad. But for these kids school was seen to be worse than even that.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
This is a strawman, because we aren't comparing school to no education. No one's saying kids should be toiling in fields or watching TV all day.
We're looking at if school is an efficient use of time and resources when compared to alternative forms of education. Right now I'd say it really isn't: the amount of amazing online educational material is staggering. There's so much scope for a better model of teaching.
The ideal would probably be a hybrid: children studying at home using online materials, having time to develop hobbies and talents, and then going into school for a couple of days a week to show what they've done and have professionals go over it with them. No lecturing to 30 kids when they can watch a video of that lecture. No tasks for the sake of giving people something to do. No issues of classroom management. No problems with different learning speeds or approaches.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
What you should have been doing is trying to figure out if they were getting an education or not. That's what I meant when I said you weren't fully engaging with your conversation partner.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
Well OP specifically said that the kid was essentially not getting homeschooled or anything. As for the idea that getting an education outside of school is often better, I don't doubt it. That said, school is a relatively cost efficient way of giving general knowledge to kids. I would argue that school in general increases the odds over most other methods (that aren't outrageously expensive).
I think that the biggest mistake that people make is that in many cases they look at education as a purely practical way to achieve longer term goals, as if school was just a way to acquire skills to have a trade. From that perspective, you could easily argue that school is useless and the farmer's kid might as well not learn to read if he doesn't like it, and just learn to be a farmer. It's efficient and whatnot. That's shallow.
Anywho, yes there are people who have managed to be successful despite not having gone through the regular school system. Homeschool from certain parents who are good at those kinds of things can be effective, although I've heard stories of it being detrimental to the kid's social life. If it can be demonstrated that a kid can have access to some form of education which has good results, then sure I could stand behind that. But unfortunately, from my perspective, people who don't want to send their kids to school before having even tried it out are wackos, the same kind of people who don't get their kids vaccinated.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
And there are millions of kids whose parents wouldn't go to the trouble of getting them to school if it wasn't compulsory. Why should these kids be punished for their parents bad decisions? I want to note, I'm not trying to demonize these people. Simply getting kids to school is difficult, and becoming fully invested in their education is a full time job. I imagine plenty of people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds might simply find it too much of a hassle. You're right that those with the means to do so can probably find a better way to educate themselves than the public school system, and for those people there are private schools.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
Well OP specifically said that the kid was essentially not getting homeschooled or anything.
No, he said he didn't like the term. He gave some examples of what their kids were learning and doing, which seemed to be more than the average middle school kid would. So yes, they were getting an education (if you believe what he was saying).
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
And there are millions of kids whose parents wouldn't go to the trouble of getting them to school if it wasn't compulsory. Why should these kids be punished for their parents bad decisions? I want to note, I'm not trying to demonize these people. Simply getting kids to school is difficult, and becoming fully invested in their education is a full time job. I imagine plenty of people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds might simply find it too much of a hassle. You're right that those with the means to do so can probably find a better way to educate themselves than the public school system, and for those people there are private schools.
There are two related but different questions:
1. Is skipping school better than going to school for some kids?
2. Should parents be allowed to not send their kids to school?
The answer to 1 is clearly yes, and for quite a lot of kids.
I'm surprised many people think blue's ideas were pretty flawed. I'd say it's definitely not the norm but definitely not flawed.
Personally I was homeschooled from age 6-16 and had a really positive experience growing up. (similar to Birdie I suppose) one thing that was massively beneficial to me by dodging the normal public school path was it freed up time to get out and do many other things, and get more real world experience starting at a younger age. Throughout most of my middle school and high school years my parents had me volunteering once or twice a week at a Red Cross office, the local library and a national park, all of which got me out almost in the working world at a relatively young age interacting with people of all ages, doing work across a wide range of trades, all of which is what prepares you more for the real world than sitting in a classroom all day every day.
Thanks to my volunteering at Red Cross I also got free classes there as well and was CPR and first aid certified at age 13 lol...at age 16 I enlisted as a dual enrollment student at the local community college and started taking a bunch of classes there including all the more difficult high school subjects that parents or other parents of the local homeschool support group couldn't teach like chemistry/calculus. This turned out to be awesome preparation for college because I got used to doing college level work at a pretty early age. By the time I transferred to university at age 20 (after finishing an associates degree at community college) actual college was a breeze, I went to a college that did not really challenge me much academically, but I chose the easy route and went to the school close to home. I was working throughout this entire time as well(and literally saved ALL of my money) so I pretty much paid my entire college education as I went, I had 0 student loans upon graduation with next to no financial help from my parents. I know of almost no one who can say that.
I'm also literally the only person I know who dodged the SAT. Few people that know me even know that about me probably because it's so crazy. I took the PSAT at age 15(scored in the top 10% in English/comprehension, bottom 10% in Math) but after I was nearly full time at the community college at 16 (I had to take a placement test to get into community college which I did fine on) my parents didn't even have me take the SAT, we realized as long as I kept my GPA up decently high (over a 3.5 or something) I would have guaranteed entry as a transfer student to almost any public university in my state (Virginia). SAT suddenly become very irrelevant and seemingly a waste of time. Math was a struggle before age 16, but I pretty much chewed through almost every math class at the community college over a 2 year period and did fine throughout.
I graduated univ at 22 and started working full time in IT as a system admin/consultant a few months later and do fine for myself now 3 years later.
You need a parent who is really willing to be able to do things right though if you're going to be homeschooled. One parent needs to basically make it their full time job which my Mom did. Very small amount of the general population has the ability to do it, we also lived in a good area where there were tons of other homeschoolers and there was a huge support group where 15-20 of us would go to a parents house three times a week for various classes/subjects, taught usually by other Moms who were really well educated in various subjects. Kids are held more accountable when taught this way as well, there's no skipping homework and checking out like I see so easily done in public school. Most of the other homeschool people were very wealthy too, or did it for religious reasons, most kids were very high achievers and always doing work which was well ahead of our actual grades had we been in public school.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
This is a strawman, because we aren't comparing school to no education. No one's saying kids should be toiling in fields or watching TV all day.
Sorry, I forgot the word "formal". Formal education.
On January 09 2014 13:29 hypercube wrote: You should compare schools to the alternative, in this case the parent acting as sort of a mentor.
I did, in the Facebook conversation >.> And Blue told me that he doesn't formally educate his child, his kid reads and sews and stuff, and that the kid is really smart because he's good at math (by some arbitrary metric).
You can't compare a known experience (going to school) to one you don't understand very well.
Seriously? I'm talking about little kids here who may not have a motivated and affluent parent. Go ahead and ask a six year old what he'd like to do on his day off, or you could just watch him watch television and play on his ipod all day. Either way, it's going to be far from the educational experiences he gets at school, and he can go relax at home after he's been at school all day.
I think you are overestimating the amount of learning that takes place [in school].
I think you are underestimating just how much a parent can teach without a support system or any expertise.
And these kids skipped school because of fear.
And you're accusing the school to be the problem here, rather than the environment and town that the school happens to be a part of, which is a red herring. When kids are afraid to leave the house because of gang violence, school is the least of their worries, regardless of how well they could be educated. This doesn't mean that parents are automatically better at instilling academic knowledge.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
What you should have been doing is trying to figure out if they were getting an education or not. That's what I meant when I said you weren't fully engaging with your conversation partner.
I asked him what his kid does every day, how he experiences things, and what expertise the dad has. I think that's akin to figuring out if the kid is actually getting an education.
On January 09 2014 12:15 hypercube wrote: I mean, you are a teacher. You could probably list plenty of ways how schools are failing students or at least not enabling them to make the most of their potential. Just think of how you would tutor someone one on one in a subject they had a natural interest in. Then think how you would teach the same thing in a high-school setting to a class of 20. Think about the difference in learning outcomes. That difference is how much the school system is failing the students.*
Education is failing to be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's ok not to send kids to school. Everything is imperfect, and the existence of theoretical models which might be superior (although probably too expensive) is largely irrelevant because if you compare it to the lack of education
Not going to school does not mean not getting an education. If you can get an education outside of school it's often the better choice.
And there are millions of kids whose parents wouldn't go to the trouble of getting them to school if it wasn't compulsory. Why should these kids be punished for their parents bad decisions? I want to note, I'm not trying to demonize these people. Simply getting kids to school is difficult, and becoming fully invested in their education is a full time job. I imagine plenty of people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds might simply find it too much of a hassle. You're right that those with the means to do so can probably find a better way to educate themselves than the public school system, and for those people there are private schools.
There are two related but different questions:
1. Is skipping school better than going to school for some kids?
2. Should parents be allowed to not send their kids to school?
The answer to 1 is clearly yes, and for quite a lot of kids.
The answer to 2 isn't obvious at all.
I think the Yes to Question 1 is conditioned on what the alternative is and what the situation is. If school or school activities are keeping the kid out of trouble or a lifetime of doing nothing but watching television because of deadbeat parents, then it may not be appropriate for him to skip. If the kid's school is shitty and he's some mature self-motivated prodigy who studies and educates himself by some intrinsic passion for a topic, then I'm totally on board with him skipping.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
This is a strawman, because we aren't comparing school to no education. No one's saying kids should be toiling in fields or watching TV all day.
Sorry, I forgot the word "formal". Formal education.
Lack of education is child abuse. Lack of formal education isn't. Do you agree?
I think the Yes to Question 1 is conditioned on what the alternative is and what the situation is. If school or school activities are keeping the kid out of trouble or a lifetime of doing nothing but watching television because of deadbeat parents, then it may not be appropriate for him to skip. If the kid's school is shitty and he's some mature self-motivated prodigy who studies and educates himself by some intrinsic passion for a topic, then I'm totally on board with him skipping.
You teach math, don't you? How is the truth of the statement:
There exists x such that P(x) is true
dependent on the value of x? That doesn't even make sense, x is not determined.
Specifically, yes, homeschooling or other alternative forms are terrible for some kids, excellent for others and doesn't make much difference for the rest. Without knowing the person very well you can't know which one it is. From the conversation the parent seemed to have thought it through well enough, so I think it's most likely his kids will benefit from it. I could be wrong of course.
On January 09 2014 14:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I think the Yes to Question 1 is conditioned on what the alternative is and what the situation is. If school or school activities are keeping the kid out of trouble or a lifetime of doing nothing but watching television because of deadbeat parents, then it may not be appropriate for him to skip. If the kid's school is shitty and he's some mature self-motivated prodigy who studies and educates himself by some intrinsic passion for a topic, then I'm totally on board with him skipping.
Why are you looking at the absolute extremes? Of course if someone's parents are utterly useless he would benefit more from school, and if he's a gifted self-motivated prodigy he would benefit from not going. But no one would dispute that.
It's the middle ground that it's worth talking about. I'm contending that the majority of children would do better under home education. Most parents are going to put time into helping their kids, find people who can help them teach, and get hold of all the best resources. Most people want their kids to get educated, and would be able to do just as good a job as a school up until the kid hits 16 and you start needing more specialised knowledge.
On January 09 2014 14:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I think the Yes to Question 1 is conditioned on what the alternative is and what the situation is. If school or school activities are keeping the kid out of trouble or a lifetime of doing nothing but watching television because of deadbeat parents, then it may not be appropriate for him to skip. If the kid's school is shitty and he's some mature self-motivated prodigy who studies and educates himself by some intrinsic passion for a topic, then I'm totally on board with him skipping.
Why are you looking at the absolute extremes? Of course if someone's parents are utterly useless he would benefit more from school, and if he's a gifted self-motivated prodigy he would benefit from not going. But no one would dispute that.
It's the middle ground that it's worth talking about. I'm contending that the majority of children would do better under home education. Most parents are going to put time into helping their kids, find people who can help them teach, and get hold of all the best resources. Most people want their kids to get educated, and would be able to do just as good a job as a school up until the kid hits 16 and you start needing more specialised knowledge.
...That's exactly the reason why I used the extremes, as they're very clear examples of situations where students would be best off in either scenario. I thought it was important to demonstrate that it's still conditional. But sure, the middle ground is where it can get hazy, especially if you're setting up the scenario that you are, where an affluent family has countless connections and resources and basically has homeschooled kids learning from private teachers at home. (Of course, this is a rarity.)
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
This is a strawman, because we aren't comparing school to no education. No one's saying kids should be toiling in fields or watching TV all day.
Sorry, I forgot the word "formal". Formal education.
Lack of education is child abuse. Lack of formal education isn't. Do you agree?
Lack of education is definitely child abuse, but I want to clarify on what I'm considering formal education, to avoid confusion. I consider formal education to not only be children attending stereotypical educational institutions (e.g., schools), but also any homeschooled students who have paid professional teachers and tutors (who do this as a career) educate them and test them at home (this is what many affluent homeschooled families choose). What I don't consider formal education is a child who stays at home with essentially just a parent who thinks he can teach the student "enough stuff" (without having the resources of experts). That's pretty much where I draw the line, although you may just refer to that line as education vs. not actual education (feel free to clarify). But I think any parent who doesn't offer a formal education atmosphere for their children is doing them wrong.
On January 09 2014 14:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I think the Yes to Question 1 is conditioned on what the alternative is and what the situation is. If school or school activities are keeping the kid out of trouble or a lifetime of doing nothing but watching television because of deadbeat parents, then it may not be appropriate for him to skip. If the kid's school is shitty and he's some mature self-motivated prodigy who studies and educates himself by some intrinsic passion for a topic, then I'm totally on board with him skipping.
It's the middle ground that it's worth talking about. I'm contending that the majority of children would do better under home education. Most parents are going to put time into helping their kids, find people who can help them teach, and get hold of all the best resources. Most people want their kids to get educated, and would be able to do just as good a job as a school up until the kid hits 16 and you start needing more specialised knowledge.
This is ludicrous. A massive number of kids are children of single mothers and fathers, or both of their parents work meaning that they are going to be essentially on their own for most of the day. I'm sure most parents care about their children, but a lot of them simply wouldn't have the time to homeschool their kids as its a MASSIVE TIME COMMITMENT. And if they can't afford to send their kids to some form of private tutor or something of the sort then their children are going to receive essentially no education.
Also, we tend to believe that there is an inherent value to having some form of education. Sure a farmer doesn't really need to know how to read, but a lot of the principles of formal education are a critical component of the "good life".
Lastly, you seem to assume that kids are going to know what career they want to go into before kindergarten and that their parents are going to respect that decision. If a kid decides to forgo formal education and then realizes at 14 or 15 that they would like to pursue a career that requires an advanced degree, they are far too far behind at that point to do so. The current system of public education keeps kids options open until they are able to make competent decisions for themselves. This system also doesn't place them at the whim of their parents ("no school for you billy, you're going to be a garbage man").
I'm sure there are a small number of kids for whom public education was a waste of time, however they are an incredibly small minority and nothing is preventing them from attending a private institution that better suits their needs or being homeschooled as long as they have the means to do so.
On January 09 2014 13:00 Djzapz wrote: I'd consider that depriving a kid from a basic education is child abuse and I'd arguing that it's an affront to the child's liberty and their odds of succeeding in life. Even if the education system is indeed imperfect and faulty, it's very much better than nothing, statistically.
Well said. I was also thinking "child abuse" would be an appropriate term to refer to parents who willfully prevent their children from getting an education, although I didn't want to use that term when talking with Blue because I wasn't sure if that would cut our conversation short.
This is a strawman, because we aren't comparing school to no education. No one's saying kids should be toiling in fields or watching TV all day.
Sorry, I forgot the word "formal". Formal education.
Lack of education is child abuse. Lack of formal education isn't. Do you agree?
Lack of education is definitely child abuse, but I want to clarify on what I'm considering formal education, to avoid confusion. I consider formal education to not only be children attending stereotypical educational institutions (e.g., schools), but also any homeschooled students who have paid professional teachers and tutors (who do this as a career) educate them and test them at home (this is what many affluent homeschooled families choose). What I don't consider formal education is a child who stays at home with essentially just a parent who thinks he can teach the student "enough stuff" (without having the resources of experts). That's pretty much where I draw the line, although you may just refer to that line as education vs. not actual education (feel free to clarify). But I think any parent who doesn't offer a formal education atmosphere for their children is doing them wrong.
I think it depends on the kid. I think there are many middle school kids who could learn perfectly well from online resources or print, although they'd still need access to a mentor to chose some of these resources and help them if they get stuck. They might need a mentor (or even outside resources) for some of the projects they would come up with. Depending on their background the parent could certainly be that mentor.
It's probably only a minority, but I don't think it would be a tiny one. It might not even depend on innate ability. Maybe kids learn to rely on structured curriculum as a crutch in primary school and they could just as well learn to be self-directed learners. This is just wild speculation of course.
In the end what matters is outcomes. If learning isn't happening without the formal structure and constant supervision of professionals then there is problem. If it's happening than great, and no one should try to get in the way.
I feel like we're at cross purposes because people are imagining home education to be like school at home. It's not.
To keep pace with/outstrip school kids, you are going to need about 2-3 hours of one to one attention a day, perhaps less now there are better and better online programmes. Now if parents are doing 9-5 jobs and are trapped in a position with no flexibility, then that's going to make things difficult: you obviously don't want to leave kids home alone (home education or not). But if you have any flexibility, it's doable. If there's another way you can make a living it might be better for your kids education, though perhaps not for your career.
None of this requires affluence: most people could do it if they wanted to, just by explaining simple things and helping children follow a course or book. Primary and early secondary school is extremely basic. When I talk about finding people who can help you teach I don't mean employing a tutor.
For example, my parents wanted me to do a history exam. I'd already read a huge amount in the relevant periods, and liked the subject but didn't know how to go about writing an answer to an exam paper. They found a friend of a friend who was a history teacher. I saw him once, we chatted about the exam paper, he told me what they were looking for. I did 3-4 papers in the next couple of weeks, went back to him, he helped and corrected me, and then I took the exam. This was free (though I think they got him a bottle of something as a thank you). Even if they'd paid him for those two hours it wouldn't be some unsustainable cost.
@packrat386. The children don't need to decide anything at a young age: they will by and large study the same subjects as any kid, with the chance to pursue some stuff in greater depth. They still take exams, they are still ticking the boxes needed for going into academia later.
Most home educators completely agree with you that education is integral for the good life. That's why they take their kids out of school...
that parents or other parents of the local home-school support group couldn't teach like chemistry/calculus.
Hmm, did you not learn from books? I learned calculus and chemistry and physics from books, my mum didn't teach me much about it (because she wasn't particularly strong at that level of mathematics).
I was working throughout this entire time as well(and literally saved ALL of my money) so I pretty much paid my entire college education as I went, I had 0 student loans upon graduation with next to no financial help from my parents. I know of almost no one who can say that.
Well you just met another one! Pretty much, at least. I stopped school at 17, worked for 2 years saving my money, and am now paying my way through university, with a pretty achievable goal of finishing with 0 debt to anyone and not having my parents pay for me at all.
With regards to the original post and un-schooling: I highly suspect that un-schooling tends to not be child-led, but more parent-led. For all that they say the child chooses what they want to learn, I cannot see how children decide to do anything but watch TV and play games all day, unless the parent "nudges" them in the right direction. It may be less disciplined that normal homeschooling, but I doubt it's an "anarchist" method of education in most situations.
Having said that, I don't know for sure, and it'll be different for every family.
This is ludicrous. A massive number of kids are children of single mothers and fathers, or both of their parents work meaning that they are going to be essentially on their own for most of the day. I'm sure most parents care about their children, but a lot of them simply wouldn't have the time to home-school their kids as its a MASSIVE TIME COMMITMENT. And if they can't afford to send their kids to some form of private tutor or something of the sort then their children are going to receive essentially no education.
My parents sacrificed a much more comfortable lifestyle (which they would have had if we had gone to public school and my mum had worked, 2 incomes > 1) to make sure we were home-schooled. I'm not saying that everyone is capable of surviving off a single income, but I think a lot of parents could, particularly in the Western world. You have to make sacrifices to home-school, but for my parents, they were willing to do that for their kids. Children should basically be one of the most important things in a parent's life, and education is one of the most important things in a child's life.
Incidentally, I have none of the formal New Zealand educational qualifications from secondary school (NCEA, Cambridge, and so on). My university doesn't require them, and most universities in New Zealand will either just let home schooled kids in, or have a foundation course (waste of time IMO) before letting you in.
So he really thinks that the best way for a child to "learn" is to be isolated with their parents and be way more attached to them, then let them go outside the house on their own to school to socially interact with peers there own age and learn on their own? Vs a parent who might not even be the best educated in said field to teach them skills that are not useful? Ala dancing he mentions. He also only mentions two useful skills his children has learnt and that is cooking and sewing. Both of which are going to be pretty small use for a child. The biggest thing any child (imo of course) needs to learn is the ability to socialize with peers and learn by HIMSELF with just a helping hand from a teacher. By doing this and going to school your given lots of useful information from different fields of education. From history teacher to music teacher, from sports to arts, you get everything. Then from a young age the child might pick something straight away he wants to be, whether it be the next Obama or the next Michael Jordan, everyone starts their dreams as children through school (well i did).
I know of people who live near me who have been home schooled and to say they are completely different to anyone else is a very very very very easy thing to see. They have no social side to them as they are stuck confined to their own home and they have limited education to get into a college for further education or a job that is very hard to get in this current economy to strive towards. I hardly see them now and it always questions you to think what exactly goes on inside their own home.
The only thing i think that is necessary is higher education for people. There are lots of opportunities for people to get jobs and start from the bottom the old fashioned way without having to pay lots of $$ to go to college to then come out of college with just a piece of paper saying you can do X job but have no experience in even working a 9-5 lol.
But that is another debate. For me everything child between 6 and 16 as described in the comments should be made to go to school. If they fail to go social services should be made to question said parents and it go from there. Yes everyone has a right to their own views, but if you ask a child what he wants at 6 he has no idea, ask a teenage what he wants and you will get a response, ask him at 20 what he would of wanted to do he would give you an answer, but then of course it is to late. For me i was always the one of "fuck me school is shit i want a job" soon as you leave school and get a job you realize 1, how easy school was 2, how much fun socially it was and 3, how much opportunities you actually missed out on and had the chance to do.
Just my 2 cents
Oh and great discussion subject DPB, especially from a teacher this must of been a hard one to bite your tongue in your replies
I know of people who live near me who have been home schooled and to say they are completely different to anyone else is a very very very very easy thing to see. They have no social side to them as they are stuck confined to their own home and they have limited education to get into a college for further education or a job that is very hard to get in this current economy to strive towards. I hardly see them now and it always questions you to think what exactly goes on inside their own home.
None of the homeschoolers I know of are like that. Most of them are very social. The only thing about home schoolers that is not "ideal" per se is that their fashion sense almost always SUCKS but not all of them, and plenty of public schoolers have bad fashion sense too. And fashion is pretty irrelevant in the general scheme of things anyway haha.
LOL i can agree with that, they are pretty much "gypsy" style clothed in very BRIGHT yet old fashioned stylings. Wool jumpers are pretty much always seen xD
Which again like you said is nothing wrong its just another thing that makes them stand out to say.
One important thing I think blue touches on is that as long as you're of a reasonable level of intellect, you do NOT need a formal education to survive. I sure wouldn't go back in time and trust an eight year old me to guide my own education, but I can't say that if that had been the case I'd be homeless / impoverished / worse off in any actual quantifiable way.
I think what blue advocates is sensible, as long as you can continue to guide the kids toward enjoying something and working at it. Work ethic and social skills are likely more applicable life skills than most specific subjects taught at schools, so as long as those are maintained I could see his kids being juuust fine.
Also shoutout to blue for sticking with the discussion. A lot of red's commentary would feel to me like I was being attacked, were I in his position. Obviously that's not the truth - red seems genuinely curious - but still, myself in that position would have a hard time being as patient.
I also want to add going to school from 9am-3pm (in UK) is the first step on the ladder to being able to understand what a daily routine is like for work life. Yes i know not every job in the world is 9am-5pm but the majority are, so going to school is the first step into a routine that you get used to.
College is the opposite though it teaches you fuck all 2hours a week and the rest is spent getting "drunk" and stuff >.< stupid college xD
It is indeed an interesting discussion. It can be argued that most things taught in schools can be learnt at home. The thing is, not anybody can handle their kids every day, let alone have the ability to teach them correctly. Granted Advanced science is not needed for most jobs (it s an example) but it is still interesting to have some notions. Same goes for languages, history etc... I do agree that learning in a class of 30+ pupils is very slow (my languages lessons from elementary and high school were totally useless, I learnt English on Bnet because I had to, and much faster than my other comrades who only attended the class), yet it gives a certain rhythm in your life, like Pandemona said, and you get to see a broad range of topics, as well as forging friendship.
In some cases, with educated parents and a good environment as well as the child's own behaviour/personality, I think being homeschooled (as in not going to school) can do well. But it is very situational and for most cases, I believe going to school is better in the long run,socially as well as for your "knowledge" (sorry I dont know how to express it differently).
That discussion was really interesting, even though I can't say I can just pick one of the options in the poll. You can say that it is the first time in my life that I saw so much discussion on home education. For me being homeschooled was not ever an issue, you just go to school and that's it. Only in middle schood did I learn that homeschooling was an existing reality when my friend terribly broke her leg and had to stay at home for a semester, and then again that you can be homeschooled when you're pregnant in mid school ( 2 girls in my school, and an old friend).
Part of the reason I don't want to take the poll is that for me the only criteria against getting formal education would be lazyness. It's cool that you can stay home. Never really thought about school's social interactions to be different than any other, just that is provided context, a way to meet new people and that's it. I'm also not sure how the school education is actually going to help me in real life situation (which I don't think will be very much based on my parents who don't have higher education being hardly able to help me in middle school). For me school (and university for that matter) is only a way of getting a job, a stepping stone nothing else. I hop from one to another the fastest I can and hardly look back, except seeing some people now end then.
On January 09 2014 20:11 iTzSnypah wrote: How can somebody be so arrogant?
Honestly, that was my first impression as well. To think that one person has the time, energy, and intellect to teach all curricula and content provided throughout primary and secondary school is a rather arrogant and ignorant thing to say, and unless the parent has a ton of connections through professional tutors and other resources (which are generally only available in the most affluent families and environments), the student is going to miss a ton of academic material, and won't even realize the subjects that he could have learned about from experts.
On January 09 2014 20:16 Staboteur wrote: One important thing I think blue touches on is that as long as you're of a reasonable level of intellect, you do NOT need a formal education to survive. I sure wouldn't go back in time and trust an eight year old me to guide my own education, but I can't say that if that had been the case I'd be homeless / impoverished / worse off in any actual quantifiable way.
I think what blue advocates is sensible, as long as you can continue to guide the kids toward enjoying something and working at it. Work ethic and social skills are likely more applicable life skills than most specific subjects taught at schools, so as long as those are maintained I could see his kids being juuust fine.
Sure you may not need a formal education to survive, but I would hope parents are raising their kids with the intentions of providing even more opportunities and an even better lifestyle than they had, when growing up. And I think this means not restricting a child's educational opportunities simply because there are some cons to schooling. I agree with you that work ethic and social skills are also incredibly important, and I think both of those can definitely be reinforced in school alongside good parenting.
On January 09 2014 21:26 McRatyn wrote: That discussion was really interesting, even though I can't say I can just pick one of the options in the poll. You can say that it is the first time in my life that I saw so much discussion on home education. For me being homeschooled was not ever an issue, you just go to school and that's it. Only in middle schood did I learn that homeschooling was an existing reality when my friend terribly broke her leg and had to stay at home for a semester, and then again that you can be homeschooled when you're pregnant in mid school ( 2 girls in my school, and an old friend).
Part of the reason I don't want to take the poll is that for me the only criteria against getting formal education would be lazyness. It's cool that you can stay home. Never really thought about school's social interactions to be different than any other, just that is provided context, a way to meet new people and that's it. I'm also not sure how the school education is actually going to help me in real life situation (which I don't think will be very much based on my parents who don't have higher education being hardly able to help me in middle school). For me school (and university for that matter) is only a way of getting a job, a stepping stone nothing else. I hop from one to another the fastest I can and hardly look back, except seeing some people now end then.
Sorry for the wall of text
Yeah I tried making the poll as objective and all-inclusive as possible, but there's always the occasional exception No worries!
I fear that many homeschooling families, while perhaps starting the process with the best intentions, eventually have those periods of laziness or non-education because the parent becomes busy with other things and realizes he might not be able to work two full time jobs at the same time. Hopefully professional tutors can help alleviate that problem, but not everyone can afford tutors, especially on a daily basis.
On January 09 2014 19:05 Pandemona wrote: So he really thinks that the best way for a child to "learn" is to be isolated with their parents and be way more attached to them, then let them go outside the house on their own to school to socially interact with peers there own age and learn on their own? Vs a parent who might not even be the best educated in said field to teach them skills that are not useful? Ala dancing he mentions. He also only mentions two useful skills his children has learnt and that is cooking and sewing. Both of which are going to be pretty small use for a child. The biggest thing any child (imo of course) needs to learn is the ability to socialize with peers and learn by HIMSELF with just a helping hand from a teacher. By doing this and going to school your given lots of useful information from different fields of education. From history teacher to music teacher, from sports to arts, you get everything. Then from a young age the child might pick something straight away he wants to be, whether it be the next Obama or the next Michael Jordan, everyone starts their dreams as children through school (well i did).
Yeah I'm not really sure how Blue thinks that his child's lack of any formal education (even formal homeschooling with tutors and academic resources) is going to help his child learn the same things as a child who receives a formal education and has outside experiences. I think it's a bit limiting and unfortunate for the child to have a parent who dictates the spectrum of incoming academic knowledge (which basically ends up being "anything the parent knows, and almost nothing else"). Many kids will miss out on opportunities presented to them by other subjects that the parent can't teach, and not every kid is capable of picking up a high school- level book and teaching himself everything.
Oh and great discussion subject DPB, especially from a teacher this must of been a hard one to bite your tongue in your replies
It really was, and I was trying to remain relatively calm during the situation. I know full well that coming across as overly aggressive or dogmatically opinionated is a surefire way to kill a discussion, and I wanted to hear his arguments for his position anyway. The whole "I can teach my kid everything better than the collective society of teachers" opinion really irks teachers, for obvious reasons.
I've certainly seen homeschooled kids who have turned out fine, or needed homeschooling due to certain disabilities, and had good parents. Back when my aunt/uncle were living for a year in a shit school district in Hawaii they homeschooled their 2 sons for a year. It worked out okay, and when they were back in California their kids were ready to go back to school, and hadn't fallen behind.
That being said, a significant number of neighbors and stuff that I've seen homeschooling their kids (at least out in the boonies near Sacramento) are doing it so they can teach their kids that the earth is 6,000 years old and other weird shit without teachers around to contradict them with the truth. Doesn't sound like Blue is that kind of parent, but I suspect a non-trivial, maybe even majority of homeschooling comes from shit motivations from the parents.
On January 10 2014 01:14 Blazinghand wrote: I've certainly seen homeschooled kids who have turned out fine, or needed homeschooling due to certain disabilities, and had good parents. Back when my aunt/uncle were living for a year in a shit school district in Hawaii they homeschooled their 2 sons for a year. It worked out okay, and when they were back in California their kids were ready to go back to school, and hadn't fallen behind.
Yeah, I think that temporary homeschooling, when put in those similar situations, makes sense (especially when they have other resources to appeal to). They already have the study structure and it's not like it's for their entire educational career.
That being said, a significant number of neighbors and stuff that I've seen homeschooling their kids (at least out in the boonies near Sacramento) are doing it so they can teach their kids that the earth is 6,000 years old and other weird shit without teachers around to contradict them with the truth. Doesn't sound like Blue is that kind of parent, but I suspect a non-trivial, maybe even majority of homeschooling comes from shit motivations from the parents.
Yeah I think that some anti-educational problems could definitely occur from things like religious closed-mindedness, which only hurts their kids when it comes to engaging and living in the real world. They could be socially ostracized for believing in nonsense (e.g., a young Earth, rejecting evolution, etc.), and it could very well stop them from exploring new learning and job opportunities (in this case, not having a proper science education). Fortunately, many religious private schools (e.g., Catholic schools) aren't as overly dogmatic and indoctrinating of faith over facts as one might worry about (they still have academic standards and can be very successful), but there are surely some parents who don't want anything but the Bible taught (and those are the same parents who pray instead of medicate their sick kids).
On January 10 2014 01:14 Blazinghand wrote: I've certainly seen homeschooled kids who have turned out fine, or needed homeschooling due to certain disabilities, and had good parents. Back when my aunt/uncle were living for a year in a shit school district in Hawaii they homeschooled their 2 sons for a year. It worked out okay, and when they were back in California their kids were ready to go back to school, and hadn't fallen behind.
That being said, a significant number of neighbors and stuff that I've seen homeschooling their kids (at least out in the boonies near Sacramento) are doing it so they can teach their kids that the earth is 6,000 years old and other weird shit without teachers around to contradict them with the truth. Doesn't sound like Blue is that kind of parent, but I suspect a non-trivial, maybe even majority of homeschooling comes from shit motivations from the parents.
The majority of homeschooled kids in the U.S. are indeed in heavily religious areas.
I realised I wasn't very accurate in my post. Not that it's crucial or anything but "homeschooled" in my examples meant a teacher goes to your home to teach you. I have never encountered a situation in which it's the parents that actually do the schooling, which makes it even more interesting of a topic for me
On January 10 2014 03:08 McRatyn wrote: I realised I wasn't very accurate in my post. Not that it's crucial or anything but "homeschooled" in my examples meant a teacher goes to your home to teach you. I have never encountered a situation in which it's the parents that actually do the schooling, which makes it even more interesting of a topic for me
On January 10 2014 01:14 Blazinghand wrote: I've certainly seen homeschooled kids who have turned out fine, or needed homeschooling due to certain disabilities, and had good parents. Back when my aunt/uncle were living for a year in a shit school district in Hawaii they homeschooled their 2 sons for a year. It worked out okay, and when they were back in California their kids were ready to go back to school, and hadn't fallen behind.
That being said, a significant number of neighbors and stuff that I've seen homeschooling their kids (at least out in the boonies near Sacramento) are doing it so they can teach their kids that the earth is 6,000 years old and other weird shit without teachers around to contradict them with the truth. Doesn't sound like Blue is that kind of parent, but I suspect a non-trivial, maybe even majority of homeschooling comes from shit motivations from the parents.
The majority of homeschooled kids in the U.S. are indeed in heavily religious areas.
Agreed. About 1-2 million American children are homeschooled, and "Parents give many different reasons for homeschooling their children. In 2007, the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent of students). This reason was followed by a concern about the school environment (such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure) (21 percent), dissatisfaction with academic instruction (17 percent), and "other reasons" including family time, finances, travel, and distance (14 percent)." ( https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91 ) 17% of 2 million is 340,000 American students who are homeschooled because their parents are dissatisfied with academic instruction. Hopefully these students are experiencing academic success outside of schools, and hopefully the 700,000 religiously homeschooled also learn things outside of religious studies.
blue is an arrogant dumbass whose kids are most likely not as smart as they think and probably socially stunted to boot.
the concept of children being limited by going to school hurts my head so goddamn much. limiting their outside influences by denying them access to such a place does exactly that. home schooling alone is a breeding ground for dumb, insular views on life. if you were that worried about their opporunities, you'd supplement school with whatever bs this person is teaching at home.
if you think your local school is that awful, then either need to move, send your kids to a private school, or send them to a charter school. not to mention that all the vague bullshit this person is babbling on about can be accomplished simultaneously while going to get a proper education and learning how social interaction in a structured environment works.
it's really quite telling that this person cant even muster up an example or two of what a normal day is like for them.
On January 10 2014 04:50 QuanticHawk wrote: blue is an arrogant dumbass whose kids are most likely not as smart as they think and probably socially stunted to boot.
the concept of children being limited by going to school hurts my head so goddamn much. limiting their outside influences by denying them access to such a place does exactly that. home schooling alone is a breeding ground for dumb, insular views on life. if you were that worried about their opporunities, you'd supplement school with whatever bs this person is teaching at home.
if you think your local school is that awful, then either need to move, send your kids to a private school, or send them to a charter school. not to mention that all the vague bullshit this person is babbling on about can be accomplished simultaneously while going to get a proper education and learning how social interaction in a structured environment works.
it's really quite telling that this person cant even muster up an example or two of what a normal day is like for them.
To be entirely fair, sometimes parents don't have the luxury of moving or sending their kids to a private or charter school ... and sometimes the parents just don't care about education. :/ I'm sure we all know at least one person who had shit parents who didn't care about education and suffered for it despite being extremely bright.
Then again, I really can't wrap my head around how such an unstructured learning environment (as proposed by Blue) would be beneficial to a kid's growth ...
I'll bring my opinion as a last year high school student (obviously my experience refers to my country, but I don't think it's that different anyway). I think most of the "education" you get at high school is useless, for 2 main reasons: 1) They push you to memorize a ton of notions for the tests and nobody blames you if you forget them immediately after. I can remember about 10% of the things I studied 2+ years ago, and I have quite high marks at school. Obviously it depends on the subject too, for example it's harder to forget things in math because most of the arguments are related between each other. But generally speaking, when you finish high school, compared to all the hours you've spent studying, the amount of things that you remember (and that you will remember after 10, 20 years) is ridiculously low, and it makes you think that you've wasted your time.
2) The aim of high school should be developing into each student an interest towards one or more subjects whose knowledge can be deepened at university. But school clearly fails in this, because teachers are only paid to teach notions to students, not to make them love their subjects. It is a "bonus" for a teacher to be a good teacher, not a necessity. No one can blame a teacher because he doesn't make his subject look interesting, and as a result most of them don't care about that. 90% of my classmates after 4+ years of high school, even if they have extremely high marks, don't care at all about anything they study at school, they make an effort to learn it only for the sake of having good marks; and that's school's fault.
Considering my experience, I can understand some of the things "blue" says. It can be better for a child to be teached by their parents, because a parent will always try its best to be a very good teacher, help him/her to pursue his/her interests, teach only things that are going to be useful, etc. Of course the parents must really know what they're doing and have a lot of time available. The percentage of parents who can satisfy these conditions is very small. I don't know what kind of a teacher you are, but I can probably understand why you can feel a little offended by his sentences. However, as I said before, the teacher makes a ton of difference, and I'm not saying all of them are bad. For example, I used to hate history, then my teacher changed and I immediately started to like it more. On the other hand, I've loved math since I was a child but my math teacher makes lessons extremely boring and I usually don't even listen to them.
To think that one person has the time, energy, and intellect to teach all curricula and content provided throughout primary and secondary school is a rather arrogant and ignorant thing to say, and unless the parent has a ton of connections through professional tutors and other resources (which are generally only available in the most affluent families and environments), the student is going to miss a ton of academic material, and won't even realize the subjects that he could have learned about from experts.
To be honest you're the one sounding arrogant and ignorant here >.> If you'd ever actually been in a home-schooling environment you wouldn't say that. Both myself and most of the home-schoolers I know of were taught from books, in a wide variety of subjects. In the few cases where books couldn't teach you what you needed to know (metalwork, woodwork, sewing, cooking, sports, and so on), we either were taught by one of my parents who knew the subject well, or had a private tutor (public speaking is the only one I recall, and that was just for a short time), or else met with other home-schoolers who were capable of teaching that subject.
To give an example, in my high school years I studied English grammar, spelling, and literature, essay writing, book reports, public speech, calculus, algebra, trigonometry (and other mathematical fields), history, geography, physics, chemistry, Latin (boooooooooring, woulda preferred learning Korean or Spanish or something haha), piano, guitar, metalwork, woodwork, religious education, electronics, basic computing (Word, Powerpoint etc.), computer hardware (blew up a hard drive once too, that was fun), physical health, biology, some cooking, and several sports. And that's pretty normal for a home schooled person.
The vast majority of those subjects were taught primarily from books designed to be used by home schooled parents who didn't necessarily know the subject at all. If you can read and you can buy books, then you can home school at a high level. From what I know of my state educated and privately educated friends, I've received a higher quality of education than any of them.
Now, if you think that my education was somehow lacking (given the subjects I've listed there) then please explain how. What I had wasn't anything special by home schooled standards (in New Zealand at least, to be fair I can't pretend to know what it's like all over the world and in every house), and it's certainly not arrogant to think that you can buy books and teach your children from them.
not every kid is capable of picking up a high school- level book and teaching himself everything.
Most of them are, if they have been taught to do that from a young age. For the last couple of years of high school that's how I learned, as do most of the home schooled people I know. Citation needed that children are not capable of picking up high school level books and teaching themself everything from it
The whole "I can teach my kid everything better than the collective society of teachers" opinion really irks teachers, for obvious reasons.
With all due respect (and I do respect what teachers do and try to do), that's quite a proud statement to make. Why is it that suddenly teachers are the oracle of all wisdom, without which society cannot function? The modern institution of state education for the masses is a relatively new thing, and society functioned adequately without it. That's not to say that mass education is not a bad thing, but the idea that teachers are somehow fundamentally necessary for a healthy society seems to be quite an arrogant idea.
The whole "I can teach my kid everything better than the collective society of teachers" opinion really irks teachers, for obvious reasons.
With all due respect (and I do respect what teachers do and try to do), that's quite a proud statement to make. Why is it that suddenly teachers are the oracle of all wisdom, without which society cannot function? The modern institution of state education for the masses is a relatively new thing, and society functioned adequately without it. That's not to say that mass education is not a bad thing, but the idea that teachers are somehow fundamentally necessary for a healthy society seems to be quite an arrogant idea.
I do not believe you are addressing what you have quoted. He doesn't say society cannot function without teachers, or that teachers are the oracle of all wisdom, nor does he say that society did not function before teachers. Unless you're responding to something not in that quote, I think it's possible you misunderstood him, or are strawmanning him real hard.
I don't think it's proud for him to admit that he is irked by "I can teach my kid everything better than the collective society of teachers". It would be prouder for him to say that he isn't personally bothered by it and it's just objectively wrong. Admitting that he is emotionally involved is pretty humble.
This isn't to say that your points about mass education and teaching are wrong, but I dislike the turns of phrase and rhetoric you used in this particular paragraph.
To think that one person has the time, energy, and intellect to teach all curricula and content provided throughout primary and secondary school is a rather arrogant and ignorant thing to say, and unless the parent has a ton of connections through professional tutors and other resources (which are generally only available in the most affluent families and environments), the student is going to miss a ton of academic material, and won't even realize the subjects that he could have learned about from experts.
To be honest you're the one sounding arrogant and ignorant here >.> If you'd ever actually been in a home-schooling environment you wouldn't say that. Both myself and most of the home-schoolers I know of were taught from books, in a wide variety of subjects. In the few cases where books couldn't teach you what you needed to know (metalwork, woodwork, sewing, cooking, sports, and so on), we either were taught by one of my parents who knew the subject well, or had a private tutor (public speaking is the only one I recall, and that was just for a short time), or else met with other home-schoolers who were capable of teaching that subject.
I was referring to the scenario that Blue had laid out for me about how his kids were going to become well-educated at home without actual homeschooling Your situation is clearly much different, and that's great.
The whole "I can teach my kid everything better than the collective society of teachers" opinion really irks teachers, for obvious reasons.
With all due respect (and I do respect what teachers do and try to do), that's quite a proud statement to make. Why is it that suddenly teachers are the oracle of all wisdom, without which society cannot function? The modern institution of state education for the masses is a relatively new thing, and society functioned adequately without it. That's not to say that mass education is not a bad thing, but the idea that teachers are somehow fundamentally necessary for a healthy society seems to be quite an arrogant idea.
Well what professions do you consider to be "fundamentally necessary"? That seems to be a rather arbitrary line; surely we don't need teachers if we don't want to be educated by them, we don't need farmers if we want to live in isolation and hunt or gather our own food, and we don't need doctors if we're not too concerned about staying healthy... but wow do those professions make life better for society. I'd like to think that society should approach a career professional as if he was relatively knowledgeable of his practice (barring frauds, for obvious reasons). I find the dismissal of a teacher to be rather analogous to a doctor's position, if a parent chooses to ignore all medical advice and expert opinion to heal her sick child, and go with her own "gut" simply because she's gotten sick before so therefore she *clearly* has enough experience dealing with medicine and health. Similarly, many parents dismiss a teacher's job and everything that goes along with it, simply because *they've* sat in a classroom before (as a student mind you, not as a teacher), so *clearly* they know what needs to be done and how it's done.
My own exposure to home schooling is limited to some friends who I met while in university who were homeschooled through at least part of the normal K-12 years. As far as I can tell it's really hit or miss, particularly when it comes to social interaction and more niche things like music and advanced studies. Most of the people I've met who were homeschooled were quite well off, though (as they almost certainly have to be, IMO) and as I attend a really good university pretty much everyone I meet, regardless of the type of education received, is pretty set as far as fundamental knowledge goes. This may very well just be selection bias.
One of my better friends has admitted that he was very depressed and got very poor grades in his first year at university because he was not prepared for the workload after being homeschooled and he made very few friends because of living off campus and not having the same experiences as other students. He's fine now (actually sort of a womanizer), but he told me that he failed every class in his first semester and that adjusting was particularly difficult for him. He left to work abroad after his first year and then came back; I think he needs to take an extra semester and graduate 5 and a half years after entering, as opposed to the average 4. Technically it's only a semester extra, as he took a year off.
I strongly believe that it's very useful for everyone to have exposure to a wide variety of different subjects and that home schooling often does not provide the same well-rounded education that a good public education is capable of providing. Public K-12 education in the U.S. is not that great compared to other countries (and I speak from experience here) though the universities here are the best in the world, but I still think it is quite good.
I personally have gone to public school in four different countries with a total of about 50 teachers, not counting university professors. I had 8 in primary/elementary school, 20 or so in middle school, and at least 20 in high school-probably more like 30, actually. I spent my entire time at one high school in the U.S. I had six different English teachers, five math teachers, two physics teachers, two biology teachers, one chemistry teacher, two music teachers/band directors (marching and jazz, first guy left in sophomore year), two Spanish teachers, one economics teacher, four history teachers, a TV productions teacher, and a tech ed teacher. In addition, a couple of these same teachers were club supervisors or coaches for the robotics team, sports, etc. that I was also involved with. To top it all off I dual enrolled during high school at community college and had another six math professors and a couple really amazing physics professors.
In all there were dozens of adults who taught and inspired me during my formative years in addition to my parents and family. I certainly didn't like all of them, but very few, if any, were bad. Certainly none of them were unqualified, though one probably comes close: the worst teacher I had was probably my 8th grade social studies teacher, who did not understand how to compute area and marked me incorrect on a geographic exercise-when I pointed out her mistake she got mad and unsuccessfully asked a math teacher to sort the issue by providing a verdict, which he did not do in public view but rather pulled her aside first (I loled). Throughout all of this there are a handful of teachers I owe quite a lot-they helped me think about things and enjoy things in a way I otherwise never would have imagined.
My point here is that I do not think that a homeschooled child is provided with the same opportunities as even a child who goes to an average suburban high school. My high school was decidedly average, with far less than 1000 students. My graduating class was around 160 or so. My parents definitely instilled in me a value for education, which I think was far more beneficial than the caliber of school I attended in determining what kind of education I attained. Even with that said, however, I do think that the different perspectives and inspirations, among other things, provided by dozens of different teachers of all different backgrounds were completely invaluable to me during my formative years.
I'm not convinced that Mr. Blue and others like him quite understand the importance of this fact. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but he at the very least, could use some brushing up on his English-and if he is teaching his child English, then I dare say the child would be better served with an actual English teacher. This is in addition to his seemingly arrogant attitude, both in the sense that he seems to think he always knows best for his child (which is far from being true-simply being a parent does not qualify you as an expert-certainly one wouldn't expect the average parent to be able to diagnose their child's illnesses, for example) and in the sense that he thinks he, as a single source of information, can adequately reinforce and pace what his child is learning on his own.
Anyway, this is all of course just my unqualified opinion.
Thanks for the anecdote, wherebugsgo It's definitely a ton of work for a parent to make sure that his child gets the same education and experiences at home as he would at school!
On January 10 2014 04:50 QuanticHawk wrote: blue is an arrogant dumbass whose kids are most likely not as smart as they think and probably socially stunted to boot.
the concept of children being limited by going to school hurts my head so goddamn much. limiting their outside influences by denying them access to such a place does exactly that. home schooling alone is a breeding ground for dumb, insular views on life. if you were that worried about their opporunities, you'd supplement school with whatever bs this person is teaching at home.
if you think your local school is that awful, then either need to move, send your kids to a private school, or send them to a charter school. not to mention that all the vague bullshit this person is babbling on about can be accomplished simultaneously while going to get a proper education and learning how social interaction in a structured environment works.
it's really quite telling that this person cant even muster up an example or two of what a normal day is like for them.
To be entirely fair, sometimes parents don't have the luxury of moving or sending their kids to a private or charter school ... and sometimes the parents just don't care about education. :/ I'm sure we all know at least one person who had shit parents who didn't care about education and suffered for it despite being extremely bright.
Then again, I really can't wrap my head around how such an unstructured learning environment (as proposed by Blue) would be beneficial to a kid's growth ...
Neither can I, and for those who honestly can't afford the professional tutors and books and other avenues of affluent learning that literally come with the attendance of school, I would be really surprised if the decision to homeschool the student ended up being beneficial.
On January 10 2014 04:50 QuanticHawk wrote: blue is an arrogant dumbass whose kids are most likely not as smart as they think and probably socially stunted to boot.
the concept of children being limited by going to school hurts my head so goddamn much. limiting their outside influences by denying them access to such a place does exactly that. home schooling alone is a breeding ground for dumb, insular views on life. if you were that worried about their opporunities, you'd supplement school with whatever bs this person is teaching at home.
if you think your local school is that awful, then either need to move, send your kids to a private school, or send them to a charter school. not to mention that all the vague bullshit this person is babbling on about can be accomplished simultaneously while going to get a proper education and learning how social interaction in a structured environment works.
it's really quite telling that this person cant even muster up an example or two of what a normal day is like for them.
To be entirely fair, sometimes parents don't have the luxury of moving or sending their kids to a private or charter school ... and sometimes the parents just don't care about education. :/ I'm sure we all know at least one person who had shit parents who didn't care about education and suffered for it despite being extremely bright.
Then again, I really can't wrap my head around how such an unstructured learning environment (as proposed by Blue) would be beneficial to a kid's growth ...
Yeah that is absolutely true. I mean, if you wanna go deeper, I would argue that the issue with failing schools is usually not the teachers but rather the lack of involvement from parents.
Someone mentioend camden,nj earlier in the thread. Is Camden failing because teachers don't give a shit, or because the kids in those schools come from homes where one parent is probably in jail, and the other is a junkie/doesn't give a fuck/gives a fuck but is working two jobs to put food on the table.
There definitely are shitty teachers, I think tenure is a dumb system that should be dealt away with, but keeping your kid in school is 100x more preferable to yanking them out and teaching them yourself. I hardly have faith that parents can pick up their kids at school without running someone over, let alone teach a ton of different subjects at a competent level. That's not even getting into the benefits of having a structured learning environment, being exposed to many different people and beliefs, having many different outlets to explore your interests, make friends, etc.
On January 10 2014 05:29 KingAlphard wrote: I'll bring my opinion as a last year high school student (obviously my experience refers to my country, but I don't think it's that different anyway). I think most of the "education" you get at high school is useless, for 2 main reasons: 1) They push you to memorize a ton of notions for the tests and nobody blames you if you forget them immediately after. I can remember about 10% of the things I studied 2+ years ago, and I have quite high marks at school. Obviously it depends on the subject too, for example it's harder to forget things in math because most of the arguments are related between each other. But generally speaking, when you finish high school, compared to all the hours you've spent studying, the amount of things that you remember (and that you will remember after 10, 20 years) is ridiculously low, and it makes you think that you've wasted your time.
I agree with you that many of the things memorized in school end up going right out the window once you graduate, but learning the different subjects (even forcibly) can certainly generate interest (if taught correctly) and possibly lead you towards a career idea (or at the very least, make you certain that you don't want to have anything to do with a specific subject!). I still remember plenty of little niche facts and points of interest taught to me by the good teachers I had.
Considering my experience, I can understand some of the things "blue" says. It can be better for a child to be teached by their parents, because a parent will always try its best to be a very good teacher, help him/her to pursue his/her interests, teach only things that are going to be useful, etc. Of course the parents must really know what they're doing and have a lot of time available. The percentage of parents who can satisfy these conditions is very small. I don't know what kind of a teacher you are, but I can probably understand why you can feel a little offended by his sentences. However, as I said before, the teacher makes a ton of difference, and I'm not saying all of them are bad. For example, I used to hate history, then my teacher changed and I immediately started to like it more. On the other hand, I've loved math since I was a child but my math teacher makes lessons extremely boring and I usually don't even listen to them.
1. Parents won't necessarily always try their hardest to be a good teacher, because they may not know how to teach. It's not something everyone automatically figures out how to do simply by giving birth. Also, parents have to worry about their own jobs and other family-related things, whereas a teacher's job is exactly that: to teach. (And as an aside, some parents make terrible teachers and tutors when it comes to educating their children in academia because their relationship is different than that of most student-teacher relationships.)
2. What is going to be useful for the parent may not always be useful for the child (socially, probably; academically, not necessarily).
3. I'm a math teacher, but I don't feel that my opinions or concerns are based off my math background; I'm quite sure that my colleagues and friends in other teaching departments would feel rather similarly.
With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I think they were saying denying education to your child is child abuse. Which I don't really know anything about, so I can't comment.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
Five people being fine with being homeschooled is not representative at all.
By no means is public school necessary. However, I do not think that the experiences are even roughly equivalent, especially as I have at least one homeschooled friend who wishes he had not been. It's truly hard to gauge when a homeschool environment will be adequate because a parent's opinion is not always the best. In fact, I would say it often isn't.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
Five people being fine with being homeschooled is not representative at all.
By no means is public school necessary. However, I do not think that the experiences are even roughly equivalent, especially as I have at least one homeschooled friend who wishes he had not been. It's truly hard to gauge when a homeschool environment will be adequate because a parent's opinion is not always the best. In fact, I would say it often isn't.
That doesn't somehow make the educational system, or a teacher's opinion, to be the best. In fact I'd say that education has deteriorated vastly in state schools, which I'd say reinforces the idea that the educational system can and does screw up.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online.
Brainwashed religiously hogwashed person here, living in a (relatively) big city, am a programmer, and play cool video games online >.>
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
The problem is, BLUE never suggested every parent should homeschool their children. He claimed that it can be done right and that it was the better way of doing things for his children - and exactly this claim was what RED was challenging. Statistical analysis and representative samples enter nowhere into this.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
The problem is, BLUE never suggested every parent should homeschool their children. He claimed that it can be done right and that it was the better way of doing things for his children - and exactly this claim was what RED was challenging. Statistical analysis and representative samples enter nowhere into this.
Ah, I wasn't aware that darkplasmaball had suggested that Home-schooling can never be a good thing or done right; my mistake.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
The problem is, BLUE never suggested every parent should homeschool their children. He claimed that it can be done right and that it was the better way of doing things for his children - and exactly this claim was what RED was challenging. Statistical analysis and representative samples enter nowhere into this.
Ah, I wasn't aware that darkplasmaball had suggested that Home-schooling can never be a good thing or done right; my mistake.
If you read the very first post in the thread again, you will see he's repeatedly suggesting that homeschooling will be harmful to BLUE's children's academical prospects, general education, social skills, etcetera.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
The problem is, BLUE never suggested every parent should homeschool their children. He claimed that it can be done right and that it was the better way of doing things for his children - and exactly this claim was what RED was challenging. Statistical analysis and representative samples enter nowhere into this.
Ah, I wasn't aware that darkplasmaball had suggested that Home-schooling can never be a good thing or done right; my mistake.
If you read the very first post in the thread again, you will see he's repeatedly suggesting that homeschooling will be harmful to BLUE's children's academical prospects, general education, social skills, etcetera.
Yeah, I got that, I just thought he was talking in specific about BLUE rather than in general that it is impossible. Perhaps I was confused since he is clearly claiming here that it's difficult rather than impossible:
On January 10 2014 06:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Thanks for the anecdote, wherebugsgo It's definitely a ton of work for a parent to make sure that his child gets the same education and experiences at home as he would at school!
Or maybe this part where he supports homeschooling in some circumstances:
On January 10 2014 01:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Yeah, I think that temporary homeschooling, when put in those similar situations, makes sense (especially when they have other resources to appeal to). They already have the study structure and it's not like it's for their entire educational career.
I don't think it's clear at all what the issue is if some people are saying that homeschooling CAN be good.
Sure, it can, I don't think anyone is arguing that it has to be bad.
I do think, however, that you can make the argument that it is often not the best choice, even if the public school system in the U.S. is not all that great. The system is not so dysfunctional (yet) that eschewing it completely is the best choice, excepting the circumstance that the parents of the child have ample resources and time to spend on a proper (or perhaps the better word here is "well-rounded") homeschooling, which would probably involve multiple tutors, among other things.
Even if the parents live in a comparatively disadvantaged area (I'm thinking like inner-city or otherwise urban public school district, like Detroit) they still have the ability to school their children elsewhere. If they don't, then maybe that is an argument for homeschooling, but I doubt that parents in that type of situation have the resources for it.
On January 09 2014 07:03 sluggaslamoo wrote: School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
1. Out of curiosity, what's your profession?
2. Organizational behavior is often taught in schools, regardless of the class. Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together.
3. If you honestly think that people become teachers because it was a second-choice profession because they failed at becoming entrepreneurs, then you have a lot to learn, and it's dismissive, toxic, and ignorant opinions like yours that's the reason why educators lack appreciation in some cultures (yet are revered in the ones where their hard work and passion is recognized).
1. Software Developer. I started learning programming at 9 years old and never looked back. Although my father gave me a programming CD at that point because I told him I wanted to learn it (my father has no expertise in programming or IT in general). I was still only allowed to use the computer on weekends, so I'd learn how to program without a computer on my off days. I would spend almost all my spare time on learning how to program, although I had a balanced lifestyle, I did a lot of sports when I wasn't programming.
At 13 he would tell me to stop playing games, I never told him I made them. At the same time, I had 0 interest in any of my classes, and would receive a lot of detentions for turning up late to school and whatnot. I also did the minimal amount of homework, got shouted at by teachers for drawing in my book instead of doing class work.
At 15 I told him I wanted to become a games developer, he got really angry and told me its too difficult, ill never achieve it (or something along those lines). I was doing badly at school and apparently this was the cause. He moved me to a different school. I ended up skipping classes even more.
At 19 I pushed and pushed until finally he accepted it and now is very happy that I did it. Unfortunately Australia is a pretty bad place for doing games development, but I'm doing pretty well as a Ruby developer, its still my dream and slowly working towards getting there without having to work in a shitty environment like Activision's.
2. Can you give me an example of this? "Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together. " isn't really teaching organisation behaviour. If you've done organisational behaviour at university that is what I'm talking about. It has to be structured, group work doesn't really help in actually developing communication skills unless the participants are very mature.
3. I think you missed the point although it was dismissive, sorry. If I am taught by a maths teacher, I come to expect to be taught maths, not to be taught that I will fail in life if I don't learn it. I should be allowed to by choice, not partake in a class I have no interest in, if I can prove that I'm doing something worthwhile.
This choice wasn't given to me, instead of trying to find alternate strategies, instead I was treated as if there was something wrong with me. I don't need school teachers who don't have industry experience to teach me how my career is going to end up.
My friend had a similar experience who was a bit of a dropout, was told he would never amount to anything. Ended up becoming a fisherman and doing well for himself. This happens far too often when a teacher judges a student by his grades, and this only happens because the teacher has no real world experience and doesn't know any better himself.
1. I think that's fantastic that things worked out for you and your programming career. It sounds like you achieved your dream and can comfortably say "I told you so" to anyone who doubted you. That being said, I think that for every successful one-track-mind-that-hates-school-but-still-makes-it-big-in-life, there are hundreds of one-track-minds-that-hate-school-and-go-nowhere-in-life. And obviously at age 9 you didn't really know what your future job would entail, but you were starting to develop the passion and that's what's important.
As far as school not helping you is concerned, I'm surprised that your school didn't offer any computer science, programming, or technology courses, as there have been even Advanced Placement courses aimed towards programming and computer science. And, obviously, majoring in these focuses in college could have helped you as well. You obviously got started on this at an age earlier than most, which is why I suppose taking relevant classes in school appeal to others even if you think you wouldn't have learned anything from taking them.
2. Understanding the psychological and sociological aspects of students in a classroom is a pretty big part of being a successful teacher. All educators end up taking a class or two on educational psychology, and we end up reading plenty of research on sociocultural and constructivist approaches to teaching. Utilizing these perspectives tends to help not only with classroom management, but also making sure that the students become as successful as possible (by learning from both the teacher and from peers because the classroom is set up in a structured way that's receptive to optimizing educational experiences). Obviously, as you pointed out, student maturity is desired, but that's going to be regardless of how the class is set up.
3. I agree with you that teachers should not be saying you'll fail in life if you don't ace their course, or that something's wrong with you. It's a silly thing for them to say, and I'm sure most teachers don't say this. It's unfortunate that your father and apparently some of your teachers rejected your passion for programming, although to be fair, a responsible teacher isn't going to tell you "Don't worry about trying in my class; I see your irrelevant passion is important to you so don't feel the need to complete any of my assignments" either. Keep in mind you were a kid who turned out to be an exception to the rule, and it's not a bad idea to still be well-rounded academically anyway. And if you don't want to be, that's fine too... but your teachers still have a job to do, and that involves trying to make their students competent in their subject matter.
Thanks for the mature response, as you may have noticed this is a topic that invokes a strong emotional response from me, its hard for me to be rational about it.
I'm gonna spoiler this because its not so relevant to the actual debate + Show Spoiler +
I understand that I may have been an exception to the group, but I wanted to make my voice heard. I'm sure there are thousands of students like me that had the exact same issue. Its a case for Blue, it may not be the majority, but school shouldn't suck for anybody, and it certainly sucks for people like me right now.
You've talked about depriving education to students as abuse. Issues like this will actually cause easily-preventable depression in students, and I think that is also abuse.
I think solving this issue would solve a lot of the problems related to disenfranchised students which happens quite a lot. I also feel like this would have a snowball affect, class is all about synergy, and having troubled students in that class destroys the synergy.
As far as school not helping you is concerned, I'm surprised that your school didn't offer any computer science, programming, or technology courses, as there have been even Advanced Placement courses aimed towards programming and computer science. And, obviously, majoring in these focuses in college could have helped you as well.
Even as a private school the only subject available was Information Technology, which was the equivalent of learning basic arithmetic for me.
The biggest problem is that highschool forces everyone to learn at the same pace for the most part. Even if I did year 12 Programming at Year 7, it still would have been like re-learning my ABCs. That would also have been the highest level possible at school, and the pains to even convince a teacher to do something that wouldn't even be a challenge was not really worth the effort.
If I asked if I could skip a class and learn programming on my own (no teacher there would have been good enough to actually teach me anyway), pretty sure the answer would have been "fuck no".
I found that teachers really only want to help you if you are excelling in their class. If you wanted to excel in a discipline that wasn't part of the schools curriculum, forget about it. I was winning computer science competitions and teaching my IT class how to do IT, yet no staff cared to further this discipline.
There was only one teacher that helped me with programming but he was unable to actually help me in any regard to school, he was really a biology teacher so that's understandable. Given that I was more advanced than he, he just gave me a Dark Basic CD to give me more avenues to learn programming, but knowing that my abilities were being appreciated by even one person was a big self-esteem boost for me.
I think that is one thing to keep in mind, many people want nothing more than to be appreciated and feel like they belong somewhere.
I think this is a perfect case for Blue as he makes a statement that should open people's mind.
This will be the case as long as children are forced to go to school under the [pretense] that they need to be saved
This is pretty much exactly what happened to me. I was sent to school by my parents under the pretence that I needed to be "saved".
Teachers believed that I needed to be set straight by counselling me. In the end I turned out just fine.
I was always told as a child, that a child was incapable of making good decisions for himself. Yet I think the best decision I ever made in life was the one I made before I turned 10 years old.
I think this is a misconception that many teachers and parents have. Also, even if it is a bad decision, if you consider that depriving your child of education as abuse, I would also consider depriving your child the responsibility of being able to make decisions for him or herself and learn from its mistakes, also as abuse.
As for concerning the debate. I'm not here to paint teachers as the devil, what I was trying to say initially is that the current school system has a problem with flexibility.
Keep in mind you were a kid who turned out to be an exception to the rule, and it's not a bad idea to still be well-rounded academically anyway. And if you don't want to be, that's fine too... but your teachers still have a job to do, and that involves trying to make their students competent in their subject matter.
My point is that this shouldn't be an issue in the first place. I think its a false assumption that if a student doesn't learn a subject that he or she is disadvantaged. A student shouldn't need to attend a subject if he/she has no willingness to learn, I would like to challenge the fact that he/she is actually learning the subject anyway.
Programming is not a part of secondary school curriculum, but that never prevented programmers from becoming programmers after school. Some of the best programmers never learned programming till after school. I am also of the opinion that programming is more important than a lot of the other subjects currently taught in school
Now lets switch this with the current mentality on maths. Given that a person can become an expert programmer after school, would it boggle your mind if the same thing could be said of maths or of any subject for that matter? Yet we have this weird conception that these subjects somehow NEED to be taught at a certain age or else.
I don't think there are any facts that say, if a person doesn't learn maths in secondary school, it is impossible for him to ever become good at maths.
A person will readily cram maths when the time comes that he is either inspired or has to do so, and when that happens, he will learn the subject at a far greater rate that nullifies any importance for learning it at school. I think elementary and early secondary school maths can be learned within a year if a person puts his mind to it. If this is the case, then what is the purpose for spending 9 years learning something that can be learned within a year?
As for an alternative, I think its ok to have a structured but flexible curriculum that allows students to participate in subjects they enjoy. Sure maybe their decisions won't be the best, let them make mistakes, and when they realise their mistake, they will realise why they need to learn certain subjects.
They are better off making mistakes on their career choices early when their parents can provide a buffer, than when they are stuck in a job they hate and realise it at a point where they can't actually change it. I would also like to argue that you only learn from your mistakes, and this is a fundamental point that is missing in the current school system.
Lets give the example of a child that doesn't want to do maths but wants to do Skateboarding. He finds out that he isn't good enough to drop-in at any of the big ramps at his local skatepark. So he wants to build his own.
Eventually he will realise that he won't be able to build his skate ramp without knowledge of geometry and angles. Suddenly his willingness to learn maths will skyrocket, either he turns up to class inspired to learn, or he learns how to do this on his own which achieves the same result.
Sure maybe he could have learned this earlier, but there is a fundamental difference in that what he learns will actually stick, we can't assume that because he passed his geometry test that he will not have to re-learn it to build his skateramp, in which case pre-learning the maths was really just wasted time that could have been more efficiently spent. Let alone the trouble the teacher went through to shove it down the students throat.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I think they were saying denying education to your child is child abuse. Which I don't really know anything about, so I can't comment.
That's indeed what I was saying (or trying to say, at least!).
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
Five people being fine with being homeschooled is not representative at all.
By no means is public school necessary. However, I do not think that the experiences are even roughly equivalent, especially as I have at least one homeschooled friend who wishes he had not been. It's truly hard to gauge when a homeschool environment will be adequate because a parent's opinion is not always the best. In fact, I would say it often isn't.
That doesn't somehow make the educational system, or a teacher's opinion, to be the best. In fact I'd say that education has deteriorated vastly in state schools, which I'd say reinforces the idea that the educational system can and does screw up.
I definitely agree that (unfortunately) our education system is far from ideal, although if I wanted to learn about math or science or history, I think talking to a math or science or history teacher (or a mathematician or scientist or historian) would be much more helpful than the tidbits of knowledge that a 40 year old parent remembers from his high school days about the subjects (assuming they don't happen to be professional experts).
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
I don't think you don't have a point, but I think it's important to exactly qualify what we mean by "five people say homeschooling has worked out for them"
What we really mean is "nobody who disliked homeschooling or suffered a bad homeschooling experience is in the population of people replying to this thread with their homeschooling experience"
Now there's a plausible explanation for this, which is "everyone has a good homeschooling experience, and these five are representative of the general population." It is reasonable to think this.
There are plenty of other plausible explanations though. Imagine, if you would, the following world: In this world, Homeschooling can go well or go poorly. When it goes well, the children do well! Intelligent, rich parents give their children good experiences. It's great. When it goes poorly, it goes VERY poorly and the children do poorly. They grow up brainwashed into religious hogwash and never experience more of life or go move to the big city or become a programmer or play cool video games online. They are lost to us. They become terrible people who would never be on TL.
This world that I asked you to imagine, this is the world I imagine. Sometimes homeschooling works great! homeschooling should be legal, and is the best option for many people. A lot of the time, though, homeschooling works VERY poorly. And because we are talking on a forum of video gamers, the kids who were raised to believe that video games are literally the devil aren't here. They don't post here. They don't read this thread. And the world looks the same as the world where homeschooling always works well, at least if we're just talking about this thread.
and that's why anecdotes can't substitute for well-gathered evidence.
The problem is, BLUE never suggested every parent should homeschool their children. He claimed that it can be done right and that it was the better way of doing things for his children - and exactly this claim was what RED was challenging. Statistical analysis and representative samples enter nowhere into this.
Ah, I wasn't aware that darkplasmaball had suggested that Home-schooling can never be a good thing or done right; my mistake.
If you read the very first post in the thread again, you will see he's repeatedly suggesting that homeschooling will be harmful to BLUE's children's academical prospects, general education, social skills, etcetera.
No I didn't, because Blue made it quite clear he wasn't even homeschooling his kids (he literally said that too); he was merely having his kids stay home from school. There was no attempt at formalizing education, even at home, because what Blue was saying is that he wasn't attempting to go through the standard homeschool procedures of private professional tutors, affluent resources, occasional testing to measure their progress, etc. He just said that his kids pretty much do whatever and learn whatever skills they want, which is nice and all, but they're still missing a huge academic knowledge base that has the potential to give them other skills and generate more interests.
I'm well-aware that, given an abundance of resources and motivation, homeschooling can lead to academic success (and hopefully social success too). It's just an incredibly difficult ordeal, and the parents really have to be on top of this if they intend to orchestrate a learning environment for 10+ years that's comparable to actual school.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
You realize that vocational schools exist right? And college majors? And that students are still allowed to do things during non-school hours that they're passionate about? And that students can actually become interested in other things too, including some of their classes?
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Hmm. I think that's one of the most valuable experiences about school, though -- being crammed together with other students of widely different talents, interests, and backgrounds in one tiny classroom (or an ugly white trailer, if your school was overpopulated).
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
I am asking whether you are basing this all on the conversation you actually posted - because it doesn't look like anything he said at all. Particularly the part where he supposedly literally said he wasn't homeschooling his kids, I can't find that one.
On January 10 2014 00:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Sure you may not need a formal education to survive, but I would hope parents are raising their kids with the intentions of providing even more opportunities and an even better lifestyle than they had, when growing up. And I think this means not restricting a child's educational opportunities simply because there are some cons to schooling. I agree with you that work ethic and social skills are also incredibly important, and I think both of those can definitely be reinforced in school alongside good parenting.
That's such an arbitrary goal, though. Better lifestyle? More opportunities? These phrases don't have any relatable context as the massive variable that is your child and the massive variable that is the future both dramatically impact what you hope to achieve. You could not define what a better lifestyle or more opportunities means in any tangible sense, so it seems useless to pursue them.
What's important is being able to provide for yourself (Which is dead easy, in my opinion, in a lot of north america.) and to "be happy" whatever that means to you as a person. Sending your kids to school and doing this informal education thing are both methods that -could- provide those basic needs, and while I wouldn't contest that a formal education has been a tried and tested method of reaching those goals, I wouldn't throw out informal education because there's no reason it couldn't also meet them.
On January 09 2014 07:03 sluggaslamoo wrote: School was very detrimental to my career and a complete waste of time.
Everything that mattered to my career could not be learned at school, and I knew that and not even my parents respected that at the time.
I knew exactly what I wanted to to be from the age of 9 and what I needed to learn to get there. In the end I spent all my hours outside of school learning what I actually needed to learn to become successful. To the point of skipping classes to do so.
In the end, the only metric that mattered for my career was what I learned outside of school, and not in school.
If school is about learning social interaction then why isn't organisational behaviour being taught? let alone the tiny lunch breaks we get and the fact we aren't allowed to talk in class.
A high school teacher is not going to be able to show me the path to success, if they could, they wouldn't be high school teachers they would be entrepreneurs. Yet most teach as if what they know is valuable and worthwhile.
Thank god I was one of those "lazy" troublemakers who didn't turn up to class because if it wasn't for that I would be earning half of what I am now.
1. Out of curiosity, what's your profession?
2. Organizational behavior is often taught in schools, regardless of the class. Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together.
3. If you honestly think that people become teachers because it was a second-choice profession because they failed at becoming entrepreneurs, then you have a lot to learn, and it's dismissive, toxic, and ignorant opinions like yours that's the reason why educators lack appreciation in some cultures (yet are revered in the ones where their hard work and passion is recognized).
1. Software Developer. I started learning programming at 9 years old and never looked back. Although my father gave me a programming CD at that point because I told him I wanted to learn it (my father has no expertise in programming or IT in general). I was still only allowed to use the computer on weekends, so I'd learn how to program without a computer on my off days. I would spend almost all my spare time on learning how to program, although I had a balanced lifestyle, I did a lot of sports when I wasn't programming.
At 13 he would tell me to stop playing games, I never told him I made them. At the same time, I had 0 interest in any of my classes, and would receive a lot of detentions for turning up late to school and whatnot. I also did the minimal amount of homework, got shouted at by teachers for drawing in my book instead of doing class work.
At 15 I told him I wanted to become a games developer, he got really angry and told me its too difficult, ill never achieve it (or something along those lines). I was doing badly at school and apparently this was the cause. He moved me to a different school. I ended up skipping classes even more.
At 19 I pushed and pushed until finally he accepted it and now is very happy that I did it. Unfortunately Australia is a pretty bad place for doing games development, but I'm doing pretty well as a Ruby developer, its still my dream and slowly working towards getting there without having to work in a shitty environment like Activision's.
2. Can you give me an example of this? "Many teachers work to provide a collaborative learning environment for students to problem solve and work together. " isn't really teaching organisation behaviour. If you've done organisational behaviour at university that is what I'm talking about. It has to be structured, group work doesn't really help in actually developing communication skills unless the participants are very mature.
3. I think you missed the point although it was dismissive, sorry. If I am taught by a maths teacher, I come to expect to be taught maths, not to be taught that I will fail in life if I don't learn it. I should be allowed to by choice, not partake in a class I have no interest in, if I can prove that I'm doing something worthwhile.
This choice wasn't given to me, instead of trying to find alternate strategies, instead I was treated as if there was something wrong with me. I don't need school teachers who don't have industry experience to teach me how my career is going to end up.
My friend had a similar experience who was a bit of a dropout, was told he would never amount to anything. Ended up becoming a fisherman and doing well for himself. This happens far too often when a teacher judges a student by his grades, and this only happens because the teacher has no real world experience and doesn't know any better himself.
1. I think that's fantastic that things worked out for you and your programming career. It sounds like you achieved your dream and can comfortably say "I told you so" to anyone who doubted you. That being said, I think that for every successful one-track-mind-that-hates-school-but-still-makes-it-big-in-life, there are hundreds of one-track-minds-that-hate-school-and-go-nowhere-in-life. And obviously at age 9 you didn't really know what your future job would entail, but you were starting to develop the passion and that's what's important.
As far as school not helping you is concerned, I'm surprised that your school didn't offer any computer science, programming, or technology courses, as there have been even Advanced Placement courses aimed towards programming and computer science. And, obviously, majoring in these focuses in college could have helped you as well. You obviously got started on this at an age earlier than most, which is why I suppose taking relevant classes in school appeal to others even if you think you wouldn't have learned anything from taking them.
2. Understanding the psychological and sociological aspects of students in a classroom is a pretty big part of being a successful teacher. All educators end up taking a class or two on educational psychology, and we end up reading plenty of research on sociocultural and constructivist approaches to teaching. Utilizing these perspectives tends to help not only with classroom management, but also making sure that the students become as successful as possible (by learning from both the teacher and from peers because the classroom is set up in a structured way that's receptive to optimizing educational experiences). Obviously, as you pointed out, student maturity is desired, but that's going to be regardless of how the class is set up.
3. I agree with you that teachers should not be saying you'll fail in life if you don't ace their course, or that something's wrong with you. It's a silly thing for them to say, and I'm sure most teachers don't say this. It's unfortunate that your father and apparently some of your teachers rejected your passion for programming, although to be fair, a responsible teacher isn't going to tell you "Don't worry about trying in my class; I see your irrelevant passion is important to you so don't feel the need to complete any of my assignments" either. Keep in mind you were a kid who turned out to be an exception to the rule, and it's not a bad idea to still be well-rounded academically anyway. And if you don't want to be, that's fine too... but your teachers still have a job to do, and that involves trying to make their students competent in their subject matter.
Thanks for the mature response, as you may have noticed this is a topic that invokes a strong emotional response from me, its hard for me to be rational about it.
I'm gonna spoiler this because its not so relevant to the actual debate + Show Spoiler +
I understand that I may have been an exception to the group, but I wanted to make my voice heard. I'm sure there are thousands of students like me that had the exact same issue. Its a case for Blue, it may not be the majority, but school shouldn't suck for anybody, and it certainly sucks for people like me right now.
You've talked about depriving education to students as abuse. Issues like this will actually cause easily-preventable depression in students, and I think that is also abuse.
I think solving this issue would solve a lot of the problems related to disenfranchised students which happens quite a lot. I also feel like this would have a snowball affect, class is all about synergy, and having troubled students in that class destroys the synergy.
As far as school not helping you is concerned, I'm surprised that your school didn't offer any computer science, programming, or technology courses, as there have been even Advanced Placement courses aimed towards programming and computer science. And, obviously, majoring in these focuses in college could have helped you as well.
Even as a private school the only subject available was Information Technology, which was the equivalent of learning basic arithmetic for me.
The biggest problem is that highschool forces everyone to learn at the same pace for the most part. Even if I did year 12 Programming at Year 7, it still would have been like re-learning my ABCs. That would also have been the highest level possible at school, and the pains to even convince a teacher to do something that wouldn't even be a challenge was not really worth the effort.
If I asked if I could skip a class and learn programming on my own (no teacher there would have been good enough to actually teach me anyway), pretty sure the answer would have been "fuck no".
I found that teachers really only want to help you if you are excelling in their class. If you wanted to excel in a discipline that wasn't part of the schools curriculum, forget about it. I was winning computer science competitions and teaching my IT class how to do IT, yet no staff cared to further this discipline.
There was only one teacher that helped me with programming but he was unable to actually help me in any regard to school, he was really a biology teacher so that's understandable. Given that I was more advanced than he, he just gave me a Dark Basic CD to give me more avenues to learn programming, but knowing that my abilities were being appreciated by even one person was a big self-esteem boost for me.
I think that is one thing to keep in mind, many people want nothing more than to be appreciated and feel like they belong somewhere.
It certainly invokes an emotional and passionate response from me too
Can you please explain what you mean by the issue of "Issues like this will actually cause easily-preventable depression in students, and I think that is also abuse." What exactly will cause depression?
When you say "The biggest problem is that highschool forces everyone to learn at the same pace for the most part.", I feel like tracking does a decent job of alleviating that problem for 99% of the students (unless you're a prodigy or incredibly mentally deficient). Granted, there are other problems with tracking, but even though I aced all my classes pretty easily (and I was in all advance placement classes, etc.), I still had other extracurricular opportunities to excel in interesting topics related to those subjects I found easy, and college provides plenty more options for those who are gifted.
I think it sucks that your school didn't have actual technology/ programming course options, and it could have been helpful for you if you had that class with a good enough teacher. Fortunately, those are becoming more regular (one of my close friends teaches computer science and AP computer science at his school, and I had the option to take those classes back when I was in high school).
I was sent to school by my parents under the pretence that I needed to be "saved". Teachers believed that I needed to be set straight by counselling me.
I agree that that's an awful impetus for going to school, and I can only hope that most parents and teachers attempt to stress the importance of an academic education in a more positive light.
I think its a false assumption that if a student doesn't learn a subject that he or she is disadvantaged. A student shouldn't need to attend a subject if he/she has no willingness to learn, I would like to challenge the fact that he/she is actually learning the subject anyway.
If the student ends up having later courses or a career in a field related to the subject that he dismisses, he will certainly be at a disadvantage. And it's usually the case that most ten year olds don't truly know what they want to be when they grow up, nor do they know what that process truly entails. And they can't know they don't like a particular subject if they don't try to learn about it first, and one of the things schools provide is the ability to dip your feet in a bunch of different subjects that could become interesting to you.
As for an alternative, I think its ok to have a structured but flexible curriculum that allows students to participate in subjects they enjoy. Sure maybe their decisions won't be the best, let them make mistakes, and when they realise their mistake, they will realise why they need to learn certain subjects.
I agree with most of this, but I don't think it's necessarily good enough to excuse young students from a subject simply because they don't like it, because sometimes the skills learned in the necessarily evils of English and math are actually important for real life (which they won't have the foresight to know now because they're only in elementary school). And that's where proper parenting and teaching comes in to play. Kids should certainly be allowed to make mistakes, but I think a line occasionally has to be drawn by the parents if those mistakes will actually have lasting effects that can seriously screw up a kid's life.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
I am asking whether you are basing this all on the conversation you actually posted - because it doesn't look like anything he said at all. Particularly the part where he supposedly literally said he wasn't homeschooling his kids, I can't find that one.
Right above the Green comment, he explicitly says he's not schooling/ homeschooling his kids.
As far as my general statements about education go, they're not solely based on this conversation in the OP, but also based on my experience as an educator and as a researcher currently working on my PhD... in education
On January 10 2014 00:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Sure you may not need a formal education to survive, but I would hope parents are raising their kids with the intentions of providing even more opportunities and an even better lifestyle than they had, when growing up. And I think this means not restricting a child's educational opportunities simply because there are some cons to schooling. I agree with you that work ethic and social skills are also incredibly important, and I think both of those can definitely be reinforced in school alongside good parenting.
That's such an arbitrary goal, though. Better lifestyle? More opportunities? These phrases don't have any relatable context as the massive variable that is your child and the massive variable that is the future both dramatically impact what you hope to achieve. You could not define what a better lifestyle or more opportunities means in any tangible sense, so it seems useless to pursue them.
What's important is being able to provide for yourself (Which is dead easy, in my opinion, in a lot of north america.) and to "be happy" whatever that means to you as a person. Sending your kids to school and doing this informal education thing are both methods that -could- provide those basic needs, and while I wouldn't contest that a formal education has been a tried and tested method of reaching those goals, I wouldn't throw out informal education because there's no reason it couldn't also meet them.
I'd argue that having a thorough and ranged education can help provide you with the means of a successful job and lifestyle ("providing for yourself", as you put it). I think that in the year 2014, education is rather revered and necessary to be successful in a lot of jobs, and that many of the skills and much of the content may not be readily available merely at home.
I'm not throwing out informal education, but I am skeptical of only informal education for an entire childhood.
So out of curiosity: Why is getting a teaching qualification so goddamn easy in the USA? A lot of the teachers who end up teaching in secondary schools don't even know their own subjects, and they sure as hell can't teach it effectively, but the qualification test is so simple that they can pass it with ease.
I mean, I have my own theories, but I'd like to hear them from someone who is vaguely qualified to address the question.
On January 10 2014 10:24 babylon wrote: ... I thought you were a PhD math student.
So out of curiosity: Why is getting a teaching qualification so goddamn easy in the USA? A lot of the teachers who end up teaching in secondary schools don't even know their own subjects, and they sure as hell can't teach it effectively, but the qualification test is so simple that they can pass it with ease.
I mean, I have my own theories, but I'd like to hear them from someone who is vaguely qualified to address the question.
I'm a PhD math education student Not pure mathematics; I've taken enough higher level mathematics courses to recognize that shit is crazy. My focus is in math education because I'd like to research and affect educational practice (read as: I want to find a way to make at least a small number of math educators better at teaching and getting students to learn).
It is indeed pretty easy to become a certified teacher (your academic major is almost certainly easier than your education focus in college), and that saddens me. We really should make it a tougher, more prestigious, better respected job.
One of my rms is a high school math teacher (bachelors in math). He said that the previous math teacher couldn't do basic calculus, and she was apparently teaching AP Calc.
My brother also got offered a job to teach HS chemistry, and while he's excellent in the lab, that's just a joke considering he's only barely scraped by with B-/B's in chemistry classes. (For god sakes, he failed AP Chem in HS -- not just the exam, but the class as well! -- and just isn't good at academics, and they think he can adequately teach? I mean, yeah, again, good in the lab, but that's not the same as teaching ... though I admit that since he actually does have a bachelors in chemistry, he's probably more qualified than a lot of chem teachers in the US already.)
It's just such a joke. I mean, compare this with parts of East Asia, where secondary schools are taught by teachers who were at the top of their classes. Part of this is definitely an image thing, since people at the top of their classes in the US would often rather go into academia as opposed to HS teaching, and I think part of that is certainly due to how little prestige is attached to HS teaching.
On January 10 2014 00:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Sure you may not need a formal education to survive, but I would hope parents are raising their kids with the intentions of providing even more opportunities and an even better lifestyle than they had, when growing up. And I think this means not restricting a child's educational opportunities simply because there are some cons to schooling. I agree with you that work ethic and social skills are also incredibly important, and I think both of those can definitely be reinforced in school alongside good parenting.
That's such an arbitrary goal, though. Better lifestyle? More opportunities? These phrases don't have any relatable context as the massive variable that is your child and the massive variable that is the future both dramatically impact what you hope to achieve. You could not define what a better lifestyle or more opportunities means in any tangible sense, so it seems useless to pursue them.
What's important is being able to provide for yourself (Which is dead easy, in my opinion, in a lot of north america.) and to "be happy" whatever that means to you as a person. Sending your kids to school and doing this informal education thing are both methods that -could- provide those basic needs, and while I wouldn't contest that a formal education has been a tried and tested method of reaching those goals, I wouldn't throw out informal education because there's no reason it couldn't also meet them.
I'd argue that having a thorough and ranged education can help provide you with the means of a successful job and lifestyle ("providing for yourself", as you put it). I think that in the year 2014, education is rather revered and necessary to be successful in a lot of jobs, and that many of the skills and much of the content may not be readily available merely at home.
I'm not throwing out informal education, but I am skeptical of only informal education for an entire childhood.
I'm not arguing that a formal education doesn't provide you with the means to provide for yourself later in life. I'm arguing that it's possible to develop those skills through an informal education. I'm not even saying an informal education is -better-. Maybe it's easier this way : Most people, I think, will claim that they've learned more AFTER school or through the side-activities of school (Sports teams, social events, recess etc) than they did in classes. If there's any truth to that argument, then why not let that "out of school" time take a bigger slice of the time-pie? This applies doubly so if a natural interest in learning directs the kids to essential subjects such as the basics of maths and language.
Also, neither of my brothers even finished high school. One owns a company and makes six figures while the company deals in millions, and the other easily provides for his family, owns a house and is well above the basics for "surviving". In both of their cases I can say that it came from a core of good work ethic and while there is NO ARGUMENT for that not being built on the foundation provided by a formal education, I do feel safe arguing that a formal education is not the only way to build that foundation.
I also echo your concerns that an informal education would leave a shitty foundation, but I don't know that anyone can say that is/isn't true without trying it.
I believe that education is very important for a child's future. It is true that schools provide a reasonable platform for a child to get this education. Personal responsibility is very important because it allows people that are most affected (i.e. the parents/children) to make the decisions rather than some impassioned entity (i.e. The State). We have seen time and time again that The State makes poor decisions for individuals.
Yes, there will be successes and failures in homeschool/self education. But that is the same in any school system as well.
Yes, The State is very important for a society, but the involvement of The State should be very limited and only in exceptional circumstances. This is the proven way for the society to advance.
I believe that education is very important for a child's future. It is true that schools provide a reasonable platform for a child to get this education. Personal responsibility is very important because it allows people that are most affected (i.e. the parents/children) to make the decisions rather than some impassioned entity (i.e. The State). We have seen time and time again that The State makes poor decisions for individuals.
Yes, there will be successes and failures in homeschool/self education. But that is the same in any school system as well.
That fucking article's title is "This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education" for god's sake. Is no one else questioning this? This kid is clearly gifted and brilliant for his age, can all kids be smart just by leaving traditional education? That's a sample size of one!
The problem is that both the notions that "schools know best" and "parents know best" are deeply flawed. In many cases, it could be a mistake to leave a kid in a conventional school - and it could also be a mistake to homeschool another kid. Given my lack of experience in psychology, I wouldn't know how to figure out which type of education is better for which type of kid. What I know is that on average, a traditional education is beneficial for practical reasons. Many teachers along the way will be bad, the curriculum is not always coherent - but at least kids get to explore a reasonably vast array of stuff for their general culture.
And general culture is important. If what you want to do in life is make wooden furniture and that's what you absolutely love, it's still good to learn other stuff. And perhaps having a lot of teachers with different perspectives will eventually show you that perhaps there's something that you like even more than wooden furniture. Or maybe you'll just be able to enjoy the extra knowledge that'll hopefully also make you a person who's at least a little bit more capable of critical thinking and whatnot.
Now if some parents are for one ABLE to homeschool their kid (for fuck's sake don't any of you tell me that all parents are capable of doing a good job of this) then fine. But that's not a decision that should be taken lightly. And I would advance that parents who are "revolted" by the system and decide to yank their kid out of it are perhaps doing their kid a great disservice.
Part of the problem is that "article's" title which is a fucking disgusting piece of garbage by the way. By demonizing the education system, the same fuckers who are gullible enough to believe that vaccines are bad, they also believe that traditional education is bad but they don't know why. And more importantly, they don't know how to do any better with their resources. So they ditch it and they substitute it with bullshit.
As I've said in a previous post, the education system is very flawed, but it's all most lower and lower middle class can reasonably afford. And it's reasonably effective for most kids. Opting out of it is not a decision that should be taken lightly, ever.
Yes, The State is very important for a society, but the involvement of The State should be very limited and only in exceptional circumstances. This is the proven way for the society to advance.
Don't resort to bullshit catchy lines please... I understand what you're trying to say and you're right to an extent but calling it "THE PROVEN WAY FOR THE SOCIETY TO ADVANCE" is demagogy. Plenty of government interventions have been great, many are better than nothings (and many are fucking awful but that's no reason to dismiss everything with the back of your hand).
The political right is correct because it's proven to be correct. -Azzur
Granted, I don't know what you mean by "exceptional circumstances" but yeah.
I think a lot of people also seem to heavily underrate the benefits of a relatively broad education. I'm currently studying computer science, and while almost none of it focused on code specifically, I would say that my education at a traditional (albeit private) high school has greatly helped me both in my studies and just in enjoying life in general. I know a decent amount of people that began learning about their chosen field before leaving high school. While some of them may have liked to have a bit more focus on that field before university, I don't think almost any of them would say that high school held them back when they could have achieved more. As usual in this thread, this is all anecdotal, but the experience of being frustrated with the system may not be as common as you think, even for those students who excel in some area outside of the traditional high school subjects.
I believe that education is very important for a child's future. It is true that schools provide a reasonable platform for a child to get this education. Personal responsibility is very important because it allows people that are most affected (i.e. the parents/children) to make the decisions rather than some impassioned entity (i.e. The State). We have seen time and time again that The State makes poor decisions for individuals.
Yes, there will be successes and failures in homeschool/self education. But that is the same in any school system as well.
That fucking article's title is "This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education" for god's sake. Is no one else questioning this? This kid is clearly gifted and brilliant for his age, can all kids be smart just by leaving traditional education? That's a sample size of one!
The problem is that both the notions that "schools know best" and "parents know best" are deeply flawed. In many cases, it could be a mistake to leave a kid in a conventional school - and it could also be a mistake to homeschool another kid. Given my lack of experience in psychology, I wouldn't know how to figure out which type of education is better for which type of kid. What I know is that on average, a traditional education is beneficial for practical reasons. Many teachers along the way will be bad, the curriculum is not always coherent - but at least kids get to explore a reasonably vast array of stuff for their general culture.
And general culture is important. If what you want to do in life is make wooden furniture and that's what you absolutely love, it's still good to learn other stuff. And perhaps having a lot of teachers with different perspectives will eventually show you that perhaps there's something that you like even more than wooden furniture. Or maybe you'll just be able to enjoy the extra knowledge that'll hopefully also make you a person who's at least a little bit more capable of critical thinking and whatnot.
Now if some parents are for one ABLE to homeschool their kid (for fuck's sake don't any of you tell me that all parents are capable of doing a good job of this) then fine. But that's not a decision that should be taken lightly. And I would advance that parents who are "revolted" by the system and decide to yank their kid out of it are perhaps doing their kid a great disservice.
Part of the problem is that "article's" title which is a fucking disgusting piece of garbage by the way. By demonizing the education system, the same fuckers who are gullible enough to believe that vaccines are bad, they also believe that traditional education is bad but they don't know why. And more importantly, they don't know how to do any better with their resources. So they ditch it and they substitute it with bullshit.
As I've said in a previous post, the education system is very flawed, but it's all most lower and lower middle class can reasonably afford. And it's reasonably effective for most kids. Opting out of it is not a decision that should be taken lightly, ever.
Yes, The State is very important for a society, but the involvement of The State should be very limited and only in exceptional circumstances. This is the proven way for the society to advance.
Don't resort to bullshit catchy lines please... I understand what you're trying to say and you're right to an extent but calling it "THE PROVEN WAY FOR THE SOCIETY TO ADVANCE" is demagogy. Plenty of government interventions have been great, many are better than nothings (and many are fucking awful but that's no reason to dismiss everything with the back of your hand).
The political right is correct because it's proven to be correct. -Azzur
Granted, I don't know what you mean by "exceptional circumstances" but yeah.
I can't comprehend your point because it contains alot of words but they don't mean anything. My point is very simple: if parents wish for their kids to opt out of traditional education, then they should be allowed to do so. The premise is that they will be accountable their kids future and hence should be given the responsibility for it.
Your yourself said that some kids will benefit from a non-traditional education. You clearly understand that non-traditional education can work for some people. So, why should they be denied the chance?
No one here says that schools should be eliminated. You have missed the point of what some are saying - people should be given the free choice and reap the benefits/consequences. Whether you personally think one way (or the other) is better is totally immaterial to the discussion.
I believe that education is very important for a child's future. It is true that schools provide a reasonable platform for a child to get this education. Personal responsibility is very important because it allows people that are most affected (i.e. the parents/children) to make the decisions rather than some impassioned entity (i.e. The State). We have seen time and time again that The State makes poor decisions for individuals.
Yes, there will be successes and failures in homeschool/self education. But that is the same in any school system as well.
That fucking article's title is "This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education" for god's sake. Is no one else questioning this? This kid is clearly gifted and brilliant for his age, can all kids be smart just by leaving traditional education? That's a sample size of one!
The problem is that both the notions that "schools know best" and "parents know best" are deeply flawed. In many cases, it could be a mistake to leave a kid in a conventional school - and it could also be a mistake to homeschool another kid. Given my lack of experience in psychology, I wouldn't know how to figure out which type of education is better for which type of kid. What I know is that on average, a traditional education is beneficial for practical reasons. Many teachers along the way will be bad, the curriculum is not always coherent - but at least kids get to explore a reasonably vast array of stuff for their general culture.
And general culture is important. If what you want to do in life is make wooden furniture and that's what you absolutely love, it's still good to learn other stuff. And perhaps having a lot of teachers with different perspectives will eventually show you that perhaps there's something that you like even more than wooden furniture. Or maybe you'll just be able to enjoy the extra knowledge that'll hopefully also make you a person who's at least a little bit more capable of critical thinking and whatnot.
Now if some parents are for one ABLE to homeschool their kid (for fuck's sake don't any of you tell me that all parents are capable of doing a good job of this) then fine. But that's not a decision that should be taken lightly. And I would advance that parents who are "revolted" by the system and decide to yank their kid out of it are perhaps doing their kid a great disservice.
Part of the problem is that "article's" title which is a fucking disgusting piece of garbage by the way. By demonizing the education system, the same fuckers who are gullible enough to believe that vaccines are bad, they also believe that traditional education is bad but they don't know why. And more importantly, they don't know how to do any better with their resources. So they ditch it and they substitute it with bullshit.
As I've said in a previous post, the education system is very flawed, but it's all most lower and lower middle class can reasonably afford. And it's reasonably effective for most kids. Opting out of it is not a decision that should be taken lightly, ever.
Yes, The State is very important for a society, but the involvement of The State should be very limited and only in exceptional circumstances. This is the proven way for the society to advance.
Don't resort to bullshit catchy lines please... I understand what you're trying to say and you're right to an extent but calling it "THE PROVEN WAY FOR THE SOCIETY TO ADVANCE" is demagogy. Plenty of government interventions have been great, many are better than nothings (and many are fucking awful but that's no reason to dismiss everything with the back of your hand).
The political right is correct because it's proven to be correct. -Azzur
Granted, I don't know what you mean by "exceptional circumstances" but yeah.
I can't comprehend your point because it contains alot of words but they don't mean anything. My point is very simple: if parents wish for their kids to opt out of traditional education, then they should be allowed to do so. The premise is that they will be accountable their kids future and hence should be given the responsibility for it.
Your yourself said that some kids will benefit from a non-traditional education. You clearly understand that non-traditional education can work for some people. So, why should they be denied the chance?
No one here says that schools should be eliminated. You have missed the point of what some are saying - people should be given the free choice and reap the benefits/consequences. Whether you personally think one way (or the other) is better is totally immaterial to the discussion.
That TED video is pretty cool, and it certainly demonstrates that a kid, given the right resources, can succeed outside of school. And I think that's absolutely awesome, and I'd love it if my kids ended up being that insightful and well-rounded. I think the speaker is an example of a successful homeschooled education (as are a few of the other posters in this thread). We just need to also keep in mind, however, that this kid has a lot of resources, super-motivated parents, and a ton of other affluent opportunities that many students (unfortunately) won't have. Clearly, homeschooling is working for him, but it's also because he's got a structured schedule (he said that once a day he does X, once a week he does Y, there are 8 rules to follow and pursue, etc.). So it's a great example of how homeschooling can be successful, but I don't think anyone is saying that no kid should be homeschooled (or that no kid should be put in school, for that matter).
On January 10 2014 10:52 babylon wrote: One of my rms is a high school math teacher (bachelors in math). He said that the previous math teacher couldn't do basic calculus, and she was apparently teaching AP Calc.
My brother also got offered a job to teach HS chemistry, and while he's excellent in the lab, that's just a joke considering he's only barely scraped by with B-/B's in chemistry classes. (For god sakes, he failed AP Chem in HS -- not just the exam, but the class as well! -- and just isn't good at academics, and they think he can adequately teach? I mean, yeah, again, good in the lab, but that's not the same as teaching ... though I admit that since he actually does have a bachelors in chemistry, he's probably more qualified than a lot of chem teachers in the US already.)
It's just such a joke. I mean, compare this with parts of East Asia, where secondary schools are taught by teachers who were at the top of their classes. Part of this is definitely an image thing, since people at the top of their classes in the US would often rather go into academia as opposed to HS teaching, and I think part of that is certainly due to how little prestige is attached to HS teaching.
Those are definitely serious concerns, as it's terrible news when anyone takes a job that they're unqualified for. I can venture a few guesses as to why that may have happened...
1. Inadequate resources to obtain a more qualified teacher. When the pool of teachers you can select from is tiny (perhaps because you're in a not-so-attractive district, or you have very little money to offer), you pretty much take what you can get. And there is actually a dearth of math and science teachers in this country, despite there being an overabundance of history, English, elementary, and special educators.
2. They may have forgotten the easier/ earlier concepts. While you did say they failed calculus and chemistry in high school, they eventually went on to obtain college degrees in mathematics and chemistry, so clearly they were at least adequate in general in regards to those topics. A mathematics degree isn't all about calculus (although some parts are useful for about half the classes), and the higher chemistry classes don't always return back to the basics of Chem 101 (the usual college equivalent of AP Chem in high schools), so they may have succeeded in other areas of the field- enough to net them a degree- all the while forgetting some of the basics (which are the stuff they'll unfortunately need to teach).
I believe that education is very important for a child's future. It is true that schools provide a reasonable platform for a child to get this education. Personal responsibility is very important because it allows people that are most affected (i.e. the parents/children) to make the decisions rather than some impassioned entity (i.e. The State). We have seen time and time again that The State makes poor decisions for individuals.
Yes, there will be successes and failures in homeschool/self education. But that is the same in any school system as well.
That fucking article's title is "This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education" for god's sake. Is no one else questioning this? This kid is clearly gifted and brilliant for his age, can all kids be smart just by leaving traditional education? That's a sample size of one!
The problem is that both the notions that "schools know best" and "parents know best" are deeply flawed. In many cases, it could be a mistake to leave a kid in a conventional school - and it could also be a mistake to homeschool another kid. Given my lack of experience in psychology, I wouldn't know how to figure out which type of education is better for which type of kid. What I know is that on average, a traditional education is beneficial for practical reasons. Many teachers along the way will be bad, the curriculum is not always coherent - but at least kids get to explore a reasonably vast array of stuff for their general culture.
And general culture is important. If what you want to do in life is make wooden furniture and that's what you absolutely love, it's still good to learn other stuff. And perhaps having a lot of teachers with different perspectives will eventually show you that perhaps there's something that you like even more than wooden furniture. Or maybe you'll just be able to enjoy the extra knowledge that'll hopefully also make you a person who's at least a little bit more capable of critical thinking and whatnot.
Now if some parents are for one ABLE to homeschool their kid (for fuck's sake don't any of you tell me that all parents are capable of doing a good job of this) then fine. But that's not a decision that should be taken lightly. And I would advance that parents who are "revolted" by the system and decide to yank their kid out of it are perhaps doing their kid a great disservice.
Part of the problem is that "article's" title which is a fucking disgusting piece of garbage by the way. By demonizing the education system, the same fuckers who are gullible enough to believe that vaccines are bad, they also believe that traditional education is bad but they don't know why. And more importantly, they don't know how to do any better with their resources. So they ditch it and they substitute it with bullshit.
As I've said in a previous post, the education system is very flawed, but it's all most lower and lower middle class can reasonably afford. And it's reasonably effective for most kids. Opting out of it is not a decision that should be taken lightly, ever.
Yes, The State is very important for a society, but the involvement of The State should be very limited and only in exceptional circumstances. This is the proven way for the society to advance.
Don't resort to bullshit catchy lines please... I understand what you're trying to say and you're right to an extent but calling it "THE PROVEN WAY FOR THE SOCIETY TO ADVANCE" is demagogy. Plenty of government interventions have been great, many are better than nothings (and many are fucking awful but that's no reason to dismiss everything with the back of your hand).
The political right is correct because it's proven to be correct. -Azzur
Granted, I don't know what you mean by "exceptional circumstances" but yeah.
I can't comprehend your point because it contains alot of words but they don't mean anything. My point is very simple: if parents wish for their kids to opt out of traditional education, then they should be allowed to do so. The premise is that they will be accountable their kids future and hence should be given the responsibility for it.
Your yourself said that some kids will benefit from a non-traditional education. You clearly understand that non-traditional education can work for some people. So, why should they be denied the chance?
No one here says that schools should be eliminated. You have missed the point of what some are saying - people should be given the free choice and reap the benefits/consequences. Whether you personally think one way (or the other) is better is totally immaterial to the discussion.
I don't get what you don't understand. English is my second language, I recognize that sometimes it's not perfect but you should be able to understand what I'm saying. I suspect you may be lazy, disingenuous or dumb if you think my "words don't mean anything". Make an effort.
I understand your point that "if parents wish for their kids to opt out of traditional education, then they should be allowed to do so.". That's also not a point or an argument, it's a statement of belief or opinion, and it's worthless on its own. As for the argument that parents will be responsible of their kid's future, that's great in theory, but in practice could it possibly lead to parents misjudging their ability to properly educate their kids and prepare them to the real world? What would happen in 10 years when little Timmy is 3 years behind the other kids because he didn't take advantage of the heavily subsidized school system and his parent's don't have the competences that they need to educate a kid?
As for my point, you've missed it. I never argued against the fictitious position that schools should be abolished. I argued against your position that people should be able to opt out, possibly without any evidence that they are indeed capable of giving their child an education that's equivalent or better to what they would get in the traditional education system.
My argument is that parents who wish to give their kids an alternative education to their child should be able to prove that they have the means to do so. And I take this position for multiple reasons. For one, if a parent really does believe that their child is better off outside of school and they care and know enough to educate their child by themselves, then they won't mind the extra administrative hoops that would be put into place to ensure that the kid won't lag behind in terms of education and general knowledge. Second, some parents are just anti-government-stuff and choose to opt-out of school for an array of bullshit. The parent's ideology should not be a detriment to the child's career prospect in life.
I'm in favor of alternatives to traditional education, but it's not true that every parent is capable of properly educating a child. Dumbshit parents educating kids leads to dumbshit kids. I simply put the kid's long term interests first, rather than the parent's right to fuck up their kids life due to a faulty ideology. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that many homeschooled kids then go on to have issues with social situations because they haven't gotten used to them. (I would like to nuance this because otherwise I'll get flak since people can't read: I do indeed say "many kids" have those issues, as opposed to ALL of them).
Lastly in case you forgot, I want to reiterate that I'm not against homeschooling or any other alternative. The parents just need to be able to deliver. You don't just yank a kid out of school on a whim an teach him how to read and write. That's not good enough, and it's dangerous. So yeah that's all. To summarize: it's not a decision that should be taken lightly. That's all.
On January 10 2014 00:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Sure you may not need a formal education to survive, but I would hope parents are raising their kids with the intentions of providing even more opportunities and an even better lifestyle than they had, when growing up. And I think this means not restricting a child's educational opportunities simply because there are some cons to schooling. I agree with you that work ethic and social skills are also incredibly important, and I think both of those can definitely be reinforced in school alongside good parenting.
That's such an arbitrary goal, though. Better lifestyle? More opportunities? These phrases don't have any relatable context as the massive variable that is your child and the massive variable that is the future both dramatically impact what you hope to achieve. You could not define what a better lifestyle or more opportunities means in any tangible sense, so it seems useless to pursue them.
What's important is being able to provide for yourself (Which is dead easy, in my opinion, in a lot of north america.) and to "be happy" whatever that means to you as a person. Sending your kids to school and doing this informal education thing are both methods that -could- provide those basic needs, and while I wouldn't contest that a formal education has been a tried and tested method of reaching those goals, I wouldn't throw out informal education because there's no reason it couldn't also meet them.
I'd argue that having a thorough and ranged education can help provide you with the means of a successful job and lifestyle ("providing for yourself", as you put it). I think that in the year 2014, education is rather revered and necessary to be successful in a lot of jobs, and that many of the skills and much of the content may not be readily available merely at home.
I'm not throwing out informal education, but I am skeptical of only informal education for an entire childhood.
I'm not arguing that a formal education doesn't provide you with the means to provide for yourself later in life. I'm arguing that it's possible to develop those skills through an informal education. I'm not even saying an informal education is -better-. Maybe it's easier this way : Most people, I think, will claim that they've learned more AFTER school or through the side-activities of school (Sports teams, social events, recess etc) than they did in classes. If there's any truth to that argument, then why not let that "out of school" time take a bigger slice of the time-pie? This applies doubly so if a natural interest in learning directs the kids to essential subjects such as the basics of maths and language.
Also, neither of my brothers even finished high school. One owns a company and makes six figures while the company deals in millions, and the other easily provides for his family, owns a house and is well above the basics for "surviving". In both of their cases I can say that it came from a core of good work ethic and while there is NO ARGUMENT for that not being built on the foundation provided by a formal education, I do feel safe arguing that a formal education is not the only way to build that foundation.
I also echo your concerns that an informal education would leave a shitty foundation, but I don't know that anyone can say that is/isn't true without trying it.
Yeah it's a weird situation, because it's such a personalized decision that even statistics on the matter might not reflect one's potential for successful homeschooling experiences, especially if the family has enough resources and creativity. The other factor, however, is the risk involved: if a parent ends up being too busy, or the kid sees being taken out of school as an opportunity to just dick around all day, it can kill a kid's educational opportunities. Even if after a year or two of unsuccessful homeschooling, he might be too far behind in school to ever really catch up. So it's obviously a huge risk, and while kids could definitely become as successful (intellectually, socially, etc.) as their school counterparts, I personally don't find it worth the risk (especially since it's not like every homeschooled kid becomes twice as happy, healthy, educated, and successful- by whatever metric you want to use- as kids in school).
In regards to your comment about the ratio of in-school to out-of-school time: Let's assume that school is about 7 hours per school day (8 AM - 3 PM). With 180 days of public schooling per year, that means kids are in school for 1,260 hours per year, out of a total amount of 8,760 hours per year... which means about 1/7 of the year is spent in school. Now obviously, kids will need to eat and sleep and such, but they'll still have tons of time for sports and games and arts and friends and family time and charity and extracurricular opportunities, compared to the amount of time they're in school (hopefully learning something). I think a far more useful solution, rather than cutting the amount of time spent in school, is for parents to make sure that their kids aren't wasting the extra 6/7 of their childhood (the time spent out of school) on crap that won't help them in the future. Obviously, kids should be able to play and have fun and relax (and be kids) too, but if 100% of their free time is spent on bullshit, the schools definitely shouldn't be blamed. Parents need to play their part in their kids' education too.
Also, while kids certainly learn a lot outside of school, I think there's plenty of structure and content that students will eventually find useful inside school as well, so I don't really see the need to cut down on the amount of schooling per year (teachers are having trouble fitting in all the aspects of our curricula as it is, although problems with curricula are a whole other set of issues lol).
On January 10 2014 15:17 packrat386 wrote: I think a lot of people also seem to heavily underrate the benefits of a relatively broad education. I'm currently studying computer science, and while almost none of it focused on code specifically, I would say that my education at a traditional (albeit private) high school has greatly helped me both in my studies and just in enjoying life in general. I know a decent amount of people that began learning about their chosen field before leaving high school. While some of them may have liked to have a bit more focus on that field before university, I don't think almost any of them would say that high school held them back when they could have achieved more. As usual in this thread, this is all anecdotal, but the experience of being frustrated with the system may not be as common as you think, even for those students who excel in some area outside of the traditional high school subjects.
I think a few people in the thread (e.g., sluggaslamoo) did make a case for school holding them back, only because their teachers were so closed-minded and their parents didn't really allow an opportunity for them to do the things they loved. And that's a pity, and hopefully a rare situation at best.
I do agree with you that schools often supply you with a broad enough education that you're likely to find some subjects interesting and promising for future study and possibly career paths. It certainly worked for me.
On January 10 2014 15:17 packrat386 wrote: I think a lot of people also seem to heavily underrate the benefits of a relatively broad education. I'm currently studying computer science, and while almost none of it focused on code specifically, I would say that my education at a traditional (albeit private) high school has greatly helped me both in my studies and just in enjoying life in general. I know a decent amount of people that began learning about their chosen field before leaving high school. While some of them may have liked to have a bit more focus on that field before university, I don't think almost any of them would say that high school held them back when they could have achieved more. As usual in this thread, this is all anecdotal, but the experience of being frustrated with the system may not be as common as you think, even for those students who excel in some area outside of the traditional high school subjects.
I think a few people in the thread (e.g., sluggaslamoo) did make a case for school holding them back, only because their teachers were so closed-minded and their parents didn't really allow an opportunity for them to do the things they loved. And that's a pity, and hopefully a rare situation at best.
I do agree with you that schools often supply you with a broad enough education that you're likely to find some subjects interesting and promising for future study and possibly career paths. It certainly worked for me.
I'm not denying that it happens at least some of the time. I'm just saying that just because you choose to specialize in a subject that isn't covered by a traditional education, doesn't mean you will necessarily find yourself held back by that education. It can (and does) go either way.
On January 10 2014 15:17 packrat386 wrote: I think a lot of people also seem to heavily underrate the benefits of a relatively broad education. I'm currently studying computer science, and while almost none of it focused on code specifically, I would say that my education at a traditional (albeit private) high school has greatly helped me both in my studies and just in enjoying life in general. I know a decent amount of people that began learning about their chosen field before leaving high school. While some of them may have liked to have a bit more focus on that field before university, I don't think almost any of them would say that high school held them back when they could have achieved more. As usual in this thread, this is all anecdotal, but the experience of being frustrated with the system may not be as common as you think, even for those students who excel in some area outside of the traditional high school subjects.
I think a few people in the thread (e.g., sluggaslamoo) did make a case for school holding them back, only because their teachers were so closed-minded and their parents didn't really allow an opportunity for them to do the things they loved. And that's a pity, and hopefully a rare situation at best.
I do agree with you that schools often supply you with a broad enough education that you're likely to find some subjects interesting and promising for future study and possibly career paths. It certainly worked for me.
I'm not denying that it happens at least some of the time. I'm just saying that just because you choose to specialize in a subject that isn't covered by a traditional education, doesn't mean you will necessarily find yourself held back by that education. It can (and does) go either way.
I agree with you. I also feel many people create the false dichotomy between the education gained in school and the education gained outside of school, as if schoolchildren can't still have effective opportunities to learn outside of school, or as if they were mutually exclusive entities.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
I am asking whether you are basing this all on the conversation you actually posted - because it doesn't look like anything he said at all. Particularly the part where he supposedly literally said he wasn't homeschooling his kids, I can't find that one.
Right above the Green comment, he explicitly says he's not schooling/ homeschooling his kids.
Thanks, I couldn't for the life of me find that. I still think you're misrepresenting him, though it's hard to know with just ~100 lines from Facebook. Isn't he saying that his children are learning and meeting experts and doing mathematics, but that homeschooling is a misnomer because they aren't just mimicking school at home?
school saves certain people from the "influence" of their parents, keeping your kids runs the risk of dooming the kids to "at the very least" a greater chance of being tunnel-visionned by said parents (meaning well probably)
keeping your kids at home is impossible for most parents (money/career wise for starters, but also just as a "keeping from going insane" factor)
this is a decision that has to be made by a couple and that in itself can be quite a pickle (for it to work i would think both parents would have to want to do it)
it is (at least in france) quite difficult to go back in or go to and thro from schooled to "home school" (we call it "via mail", kids are allowed to not go providing they show yearly apt results through tests that are not really draconian)
i think the best argument for acceptance of the "at home system" is the fact that it "can" work for some people, but sadly it raises the "same for all" equality issue :/
i'm a firm believer in what school could be, sadly from what i've seen (as pupil, from working with kids, as father of my kid going in school) it is not ...
i wish i could afford to tutor my kids at home, and i am basically working at it / counting on doing it at some point in the future .. not because of what school could bring my kid, but precisely because it fails to deliver it
social experience could be the best, but it often is less than that social towards grown ups at school and the investment of teachers is so often bad that not doing more than telling your kid that "sh t happens, nothing he or i can do" is unacceptable (it is literally is like russian roulette, if he gets missis A he will have a great productive year, if he gets missis B he will spend a wasted one to the point of asking midway to change school :/ )
i always rage at the teachers situation, how important their job is for everything (kids will shape he world) and how they are ill considered by the majority of people (easy proof: no one cares that they are under^paid, no one cares that they are overworked (too many kids in one class, no funding, etc)
i would defend the school system to the bone, if it was permitted/attempting to be what it is supposed to be as is i can only hope for my kid and save money to allow him several years off
again, very heathy constructive thread, should be featured glhf
Interesting to read how this developed. Almost every opinion that appeared after page 3 seemed to be wildly in favour of blue. I was and still am mostly in favour of red. I can see how good, competent, open-minded parents can do blue properly. But for the vast majority red is the only reasonable option. It also depends on the children. I think it would be easier for an only child because I have observed that only children often are 'friends' with their parents more often and respect them more in general. There is no way I could have survived being home schooled! Couldn't stand to be in the same room as my parents for more than an hour or two. I would have gone mental.
On January 13 2014 20:59 sc4k wrote: Interesting to read how this developed. Almost every opinion that appeared after page 3 seemed to be wildly in favour of blue. I was and still am mostly in favour of red. I can see how good, competent, open-minded parents can do blue properly. But for the vast majority red is the only reasonable option. It also depends on the children. I think it would be easier for an only child because I have observed that only children often are 'friends' with their parents more often and respect them more in general. There is no way I could have survived being home schooled! Couldn't stand to be in the same room as my parents for more than an hour or two. I would have gone mental.
While I would say that school is probably correct for many/most people, I don't know if I'd say the "vast majority" are better off in school. I think a lot more people could homeschool successfully, and if they did their kids would be better off.
In an ideal world everyone would probably be homeschooled (but in an ideal world you'd have one teacher for every kid at school so then ordinary school would be really good too), but we don't live in an ideal world so I don't necessarily recommend everyone to homeschool, but those who are capable should. In my humble opinion
On January 13 2014 20:59 sc4k wrote: Interesting to read how this developed. Almost every opinion that appeared after page 3 seemed to be wildly in favour of blue. I was and still am mostly in favour of red. I can see how good, competent, open-minded parents can do blue properly. But for the vast majority red is the only reasonable option. It also depends on the children. I think it would be easier for an only child because I have observed that only children often are 'friends' with their parents more often and respect them more in general. There is no way I could have survived being home schooled! Couldn't stand to be in the same room as my parents for more than an hour or two. I would have gone mental.
With the actual poll though we have 40:5 in favor of Red vs Blue.
I think its because Red's case mostly has an obvious point that doesn't need to be said over and over. However Blue is a little more unknown and invokes a response from a vocal minority.
On January 10 2014 07:19 Darkwhite wrote: With all of the homeschooled people - about five of them? - in here so far thinking it worked out fine for them, it's not really possible to maintain that school is necessary or that homeschooling in and of itself is anywhere near child abuse.
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional.
To clarify, I'm merely making the comparison of a stubborn parent thinking he knows more than trained professionals in some field, possibly because he saw something that he's tangentially relating to the field, despite not having proper training, research, or professional experience.
Homeschooling isn't about the average parent being more competent than school teachers in all of the disciplines, it is about having children learn without all the sacrifices which comes with cramming children with widely different talents and interests into the same classroom.
Regarding your next post: is that all based on the conversation you posted?
I am asking whether you are basing this all on the conversation you actually posted - because it doesn't look like anything he said at all. Particularly the part where he supposedly literally said he wasn't homeschooling his kids, I can't find that one.
Right above the Green comment, he explicitly says he's not schooling/ homeschooling his kids.
Thanks, I couldn't for the life of me find that. I still think you're misrepresenting him, though it's hard to know with just ~100 lines from Facebook. Isn't he saying that his children are learning and meeting experts and doing mathematics, but that homeschooling is a misnomer because they aren't just mimicking school at home?
I'm not exactly sure what experts his children are learning from (e.g., I wouldn't consider him an expert just because he thinks he's good at math and okayish at science), but he is saying that his children are learning things naturally and experiencing the real world, which is good (although, of course, schoolchildren can also experience the real world as well).
On January 12 2014 09:18 Smurfett3 wrote: saw this on the forbes website (forbes thought of the day)
Forbes Thought Of The Day
“ Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything he learned in school. ”
— Albert Einstein
I think that pretty much sums up the answer to the question
While it's obviously an interesting quote, I'm not exactly sure it completely solves the complex situation at hand. For example, schools can help you realize your educational potential, motivating you and pointing you in a positive direction. Removing school from the equation entirely may be useful for a minority of children (if done right, as we've talked about throughout the thread), but I don't think 100% of homeschooling experiences will necessarily be Einstein's "education that remains". I fear that this quote creates a false dichotomy between what you learn in school and what you will need to know for the future, if taken seriously and not looked at as merely a tongue-in-cheek quip.
On January 13 2014 20:59 sc4k wrote: Interesting to read how this developed. Almost every opinion that appeared after page 3 seemed to be wildly in favour of blue. I was and still am mostly in favour of red. I can see how good, competent, open-minded parents can do blue properly. But for the vast majority red is the only reasonable option. It also depends on the children. I think it would be easier for an only child because I have observed that only children often are 'friends' with their parents more often and respect them more in general. There is no way I could have survived being home schooled! Couldn't stand to be in the same room as my parents for more than an hour or two. I would have gone mental.
I think the majority still generally agreed with Red (me), although were more interested in discussing the non-traditional nuances of Blue's position (or similar positions) that could still lead to positive educational effects I don't think too many people said I was just flat-out wrong or dumb for posing questions and possible concerns of Blue's platform ^^ 40-5 in the poll in favor of Red over Blue.
I'm happy I went to a (good, affluent, supportive) school instead of being homeschooled too Of course, a few posters in this thread were happy to be homeschooled as well, so that's great too!
On January 12 2014 03:36 enord wrote: hi, most awesome discussion
just to point out a few things:
school saves certain people from the "influence" of their parents, keeping your kids runs the risk of dooming the kids to "at the very least" a greater chance of being tunnel-visionned by said parents (meaning well probably)
keeping your kids at home is impossible for most parents (money/career wise for starters, but also just as a "keeping from going insane" factor)
this is a decision that has to be made by a couple and that in itself can be quite a pickle (for it to work i would think both parents would have to want to do it)
it is (at least in france) quite difficult to go back in or go to and thro from schooled to "home school" (we call it "via mail", kids are allowed to not go providing they show yearly apt results through tests that are not really draconian)
i think the best argument for acceptance of the "at home system" is the fact that it "can" work for some people, but sadly it raises the "same for all" equality issue :/
i'm a firm believer in what school could be, sadly from what i've seen (as pupil, from working with kids, as father of my kid going in school) it is not ...
i wish i could afford to tutor my kids at home, and i am basically working at it / counting on doing it at some point in the future .. not because of what school could bring my kid, but precisely because it fails to deliver it
social experience could be the best, but it often is less than that social towards grown ups at school and the investment of teachers is so often bad that not doing more than telling your kid that "sh t happens, nothing he or i can do" is unacceptable (it is literally is like russian roulette, if he gets missis A he will have a great productive year, if he gets missis B he will spend a wasted one to the point of asking midway to change school :/ )
i always rage at the teachers situation, how important their job is for everything (kids will shape he world) and how they are ill considered by the majority of people (easy proof: no one cares that they are under^paid, no one cares that they are overworked (too many kids in one class, no funding, etc)
i would defend the school system to the bone, if it was permitted/attempting to be what it is supposed to be as is i can only hope for my kid and save money to allow him several years off
again, very heathy constructive thread, should be featured glhf
I really appreciate your thoughts on the matter! I'm definitely a proponent of trying to improve schools and the educational system, rather than scrapping everything simply because it has problems. I think it makes a lot of sense too, to have the homeschooled kids be assessed to make sure they're keeping up with schoolchildren.
In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. "Judging Books by Their Covers" appeared as a chapter in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" -- Feynman's autobiographical book that was published in 1985 by W.W. Norton & Company.
We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.
I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."
Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"
"I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."
The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."
It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.