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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!Is School Necessary? - Page 8
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
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! | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
On January 10 2014 05:13 babylon wrote: 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. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32025 Posts
On January 10 2014 05:13 babylon wrote: 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. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
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. | ||
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Darkwhite
Norway348 Posts
Comparing not sending your children to school to withholding professional medical treatment, is somewhere in between arrogant and delusional. | ||
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Birdie
New Zealand4438 Posts
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. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
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. | ||
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Birdie
New Zealand4438 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:23 wherebugsgo wrote: 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. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
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. | ||
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Birdie
New Zealand4438 Posts
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 >.> | ||
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Darkwhite
Norway348 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:28 Blazinghand wrote: 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. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:35 Darkwhite wrote: 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. | ||
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Darkwhite
Norway348 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:38 Blazinghand wrote: 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. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:40 Darkwhite wrote: 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. in any case, sorry for being confused | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
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. | ||
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sluggaslamoo
Australia4494 Posts
On January 09 2014 12:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: 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. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
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 07:22 Birdie wrote: 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!). | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
On January 10 2014 07:27 Birdie wrote: 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 07:40 Darkwhite wrote: 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. | ||
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Darkwhite
Norway348 Posts
On January 10 2014 09:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: 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? | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43518 Posts
On January 10 2014 09:36 Darkwhite wrote: 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? | ||
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