[carlob]

I think this is going to be very controversial on the typical HN crowd: maybe too European, or too socialist. However here it goes.

Some ten years ago I was convinced that private schools had a right to exist, but that they should never impact the funding of public schools, not even indirectly.

Then I discovered that homeschooling was a thing in the US.

Now I tend to believe that private schools should not be allowed to exist. School is far too important as a social mixer and a way to educate well-rounded citizens to leave it to the whims of parents. Parents already have a large enough impact on their kids, to let them take over 100% of their time.

I also strongly believe that parents whose beliefs prevent their kids from getting the medical care they deserve (from refusing transfusions, to refusing vaccines) should get a hard look from social services.

In general I don't believe that parenthood trumps some things that as a society we consider basic human rights. I think most people would agree with me when it comes down to issues like violence, exploitation and child labor, but I think this should extend to the access to healthcare and to a secular education.

[hawkesnest]

My children receive a secular homeschool education. They score well on standardized tests, interact well with their peers in extracurricular activities, and have healthy and meaningful relationships with other children and adults in their lives.

I recognize that there are some in the homeschool "community" who are ruining their children (imho). For the sake of freedom, I accept that there are terrible people in the world who should not have reproduced, but for me to have rights they must have them too.

[carlob]

I'm sure your kids are great, as you are probably well educated and wealthier than the average. Have you ever asked yourself what is the effect of removing your kids for public schools on the less fortunate?

Let me put it another way: most children who have some medical doctor in their extended family don't really need to be visited regularly by a pediatrician. That doesn't really imply that most people who refuse to take their kids to a doctor are in their right mind to do so: a lot of them have some weird belief that might put their kids life at risk. And even if they weren't a majority, but a tiny minority, the law needs to protect that tiny minority even if that means being a bit overbearing on people who have doctors in their families.

[surge]

The less fortunate are the ones bullying other children, holding back the curriculum so that no child is left behind, putting someone else's child in harms way because of some undefined benefit to other's with worse parents isn't a fix. Fix the socio economic problems first so those kids have better parents. Don't put my kid in with them thinking its going to socialize other kids better rather than what normally happens is they get harassed and bullied by those who are hostile and the teachers have no power or are apathetic to confront.

It creates greater harm putting good kids in with the bad then it does for the unfortunate but angry, hostile children. Same as it does putting a prisoner in for a non-violent crime with a bunch of felons, they're likely to come out a worse, more hardened criminal. You have this theory that it brings the other kids up, maybe slightly, but often it just brings everyone overall down. Collectivist mentality should be what's the greatest good.

[carlob]

Except that most of the research that has been done on this subject shows exactly the opposite: social mixing in schools has a great positive effect on the less fortunate and almost negligible effect on the more fortunate (we're talking here about a situation where the composition of a class reflects that of society as a whole, not some extreme example like throwing a wealthy kid in a inner city class).

Also societies that have good public schools (that are universally attended) like Finland, tend to have much less socioeconomic inequality in the following generations. That is: school is the solution to social inequality, not viceversa.

[surge]

Most research? What research? By research do you mean an opinion piece you read once? Most research says homeschoolers perform massively better on average then public school kids do. So what research addresses that, if kids perform not as well in public school.

https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...

[carlob]

It is well known that school results are mostly explained by socioeconomic status (I read somewhere up to 75% of the variance can be explained that way). So if you don't take into account other factors that graph doesn't prove anything other than people who can afford private schools and homescholing are on average richer. My guess is that the rest of the data can be explained by smaller class sizes and better resources.

If you want more research this [0] article has a good bibliography on the effects of socioeconomic diversity in schools

[0] https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

[hawkesnest]

But if the kids have a doctor in the family...they're being examined by a medical doctor. The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots.

Let's NOT institute forced doctor visitations (with all the cost, overhead, bureaucracy, potential for fraud, etc) for all parents, EVEN THE EXEMPLARY ONES, to deal with that problem.

Instead, let's figure out if there are better ways to ensure that parents have the ability/means/understanding necessary to get their kids to checkups.

[carlob]

> The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots.

Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

I know somebody who is a primary school teacher in Northern France, on the border with Belgium (a disadvantaged area for France, but no worse than some parts of the American South), every single year she has to deal with medical or social issues that would have gone otherwise unnoticed: abusive families, contagious diseases that went unnoticed, kids who were not eating healthy at home...

My point is that it is often thanks to public schools that we don't need forced doctor (or god forbid social serivices) visitations.

[hawkesnest]

> Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

What the hell does that matter?

Look, I'm not saying there isn't value to public education. And I'm not saying that educators don't provide a valuable and important service. But forcing public education as the panacea for finding all the ways parents fail their children is sub-optimal.

If you want to find abuses, diseases, malnutrition, etc, then let's mandate yearly doctor visits. I'd back that up WAY more than forced public education.

[carlob]

> What the hell does that matter?

If you think that homeschooling is fine, but homedoctoring is crazy, then you think that being a teacher is a job that any idiot can do, while being a medical doctor requires a specific set of skills.

I'm not saying that all homeschooling parents are crazy and are doing a horrible job, I'm just saying that people have to study a bunch of stuff before becoming teachers, and even then they work as a team and have different specializations, I highly doubt that most people can do a better job than them on their first shot.

[burfog]

For my kids, contagious diseases come from the doctor's office. (there is a concentration of sick people) The most horrifying disease was hand/foot/mouth disease, which really should be called hand/foot/mouth/anus disease but that would be rude. It can cause paralysis. There is no vaccine. My kids got huge blisters, including one that fully covered the end of a thumb.

So, bear in mind, that doctor visit carries some risk and could even cause permanent damage.

[adolph]

Don't stop there, there's more to discover--keep going to the Kibbutz!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_communal_child_rearing...

[camelNotation]

> School is far too important as a social mixer and a way to educate well-rounded citizens to leave it to the whims of parents.

Literally zero evidence for this. On average, kids that are homeschooled walk away with higher levels achievement and fewer psychological issues than their traditionally schooled peers. They integrate just fine into society.

> I also strongly believe that parents whose beliefs prevent their kids from getting the medical care they deserve (from refusing transfusions, to refusing vaccines) should get a hard look from social services.

This has nothing to do with homeschooling since many of us homeschool for secular reasons and aren't teaching our children fundamentalism or denying them vaccines/healthcare.

> In general I don't believe that parenthood trumps some things that as a society we consider basic human rights.

You don't have kids. Not that it invalidates your opinion, but you don't. I, as a parent, adapt to society and obey society just like I, as an individual, obey the law. But I am still a parent if the social order breaks down and the government disappears. My responsibilities as a parent precede my responsibility to society. As long as society is not abusive, they mesh well and that isn't an issue. But saying that parenthood doesn't trump society is a slippery slope you really don't want to go down.

> I think most people would agree with me when it comes down to issues like violence, exploitation and child labor, but I think this should extend to the access to healthcare and to a secular education.

Healthcare makes sense, I suppose. But "secular education" assumes the education received in a homeschool context is not secular. On the contrary, many homeschoolers are secular homeschoolers, especially in the upper middle class.

I think you need to do more research on this before you start throwing out uninformed opinions.

[carlob]

> Literally zero evidence for this. On average, kids that are homeschooled walk away with higher levels achievement and fewer psychological issues than their traditionally schooled peers. They integrate just fine into society.

There is plenty of evidence of the contrary though, that kids born in families with low income and educational achievement do much much better when they are in a socially diverse school as opposed to a ghetto. Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them.

> You don't have kids.

You don't know that.

> But I am still a parent if the social order breaks down and the government disappears.

Every day hundreds of thousands of parents "break down" and government takes over for them. Government breaking down is a much rarer event.

> "secular education"

If you don't like the distinction between secular and religious, you can take any other strong belief. What if my parents are flat earthers? What if they are holocaust deniers? What if they hold some very strong political opinion? Or even what if they are some staunch atheists? They will just create a bubble around their kids.

[surge]

> There is plenty of evidence of the contrary though, that kids born in families with low income and educational achievement do much much better when they are in a socially diverse school as opposed to a ghetto. Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them.

I was that kid, and putting other well off kids in my school did nothing to fix those issues. You're running on a theory with no evidence. Putting kids in a school just brings the kid down to the lowest common denominator, it doesn't have the opposite effect. High performing kids are likely to be picked on, even minority kids will get called out for "acting <insert racial stereotype>". It's works like cancer, not like vitamins. The negativity of the kids from horrible homes effects everyone, the positivity gets squashed by the system and social ostracization.

>If you don't like the distinction between secular and religious, you can take any other strong belief. What if my parents are flat earthers? What if they are holocaust deniers? What if they hold some very strong political opinion? Or even what if they are some staunch atheists? They will just create a bubble around their kids.

What if schools teach other misconceptions that get corrected in college. Like brontosauruses are a thing, or T-Rex's hunt prey. That the founding father's are practical holy figures and did no wrong. What if its a religious school district and they're the ones skirting past evolution, teaching bad concepts and you want to homeschool to correct it. What if you teach the kids secular stuff and the kid gets the politics and beliefs at home anyway and believes it because that's what their parents believe and have more influence over the values and beliefs that kid carries into life than a teacher ever can. You're running on a lot of assumptions that doesn't negate that fact that public schools largely suck, and even a half hearted attempt at home schooling has kids performing on average better than public schools because they suck so very much.

[thetopher]

>What if schools teach other misconceptions that get corrected in college. Like brontosauruses are a thing, or T-Rex's hunt prey.

I had no idea there was a debate on the topic of T-Rex hunting. Here's an interesting Nature article that suggests that the T-Rex did hunt live prey: https://www.nature.com/news/tyrannosaurus-rex-hunted-for-liv...

[carlob]

> I was that kid

anecdata

> You're running on a theory with no evidence

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/19/increa...

Here an article reporting on a study by the OECD, but I'm sure you'll be able to find more scholarly sources if you just took the time to research it.

The truth is homeschooling is almost exclusively an American (maybe I should say anglophone) phenomenon, in most of Western Europe homeschooling is just illegal or allowed in extreme cases and under very high scrutiny from the public school system, because data has shown that it does more harm than good.

[surge]

>You provided anecdata, so I used anecdata.

Homeschooling is exclusively American because American schools are almost completely shit like most government provided services here and saying because German schools are good, American kids shouldn't homeschool is ignoring all the data that says US public schools are in trouble, on a steep decline and home schooling has for many, become their only viable alternative. Look at the colleges complaining about kids coming in who can't do basic problem solving or critical thinking. Anyway, I've linked this stuff so many times.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/15/robots...

http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/29/social-jetlag/

https://quantblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/homeschooling-as-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086098

https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-...

If a school in someone's area is crap and not addressing their child's needs a parent ABSOLUTELY should have the RIGHT to pull their kid out and seek a better alternative. Saying home schools are bad because public schools should be good and use data that has nothing to do with test scores, performance later in life. The social thing has been debunked multiple times. Sending a kid to school to learn to socialize has the Lord of the Flies effect, learning to socialize in a school, not from adults. Home schoolers are typically seen as more mature than their peers.

https://reason.com/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-...

You're defending a dumpster fire with doctored data when their are news articles every day about how much trouble public schools and outdated the education system is, and using anecdotal out liars to prove home schooling is terrible. For every home schooler you show that had issues, I can show you an article about a kid who committed suicide because of bullying, who had a learning disability that can't be addressed in large classroom settings, who experience severe social anxiety because of the social hierarchy high school taught them about.

[camelNotation]

> Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them.

You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious that the United States could spend much more on education and do a much better job with the schools they have. Pinning any significant portion of the "huge cost" of the current system on middle class homeschoolers seems like sophistry intended to avoid the abuses of the hyper-capitalist, atomized system and ignores the actual problem.

> Every day hundreds of thousands of parents "break down" and government takes over for them. Government breaking down is a much rarer event.

This doesn't address the issue at hand. If a parent breaks down and the government steps in, that isn't incompatible with permitting homeschooling in non-abusive contexts.

> If you don't like the distinction between secular and religious, you can take any other strong belief. What if my parents are flat earthers? What if they are holocaust deniers? What if they hold some very strong political opinion? Or even what if they are some staunch atheists? They will just create a bubble around their kids.

If your parents are extremists of any sort, you're not going to mitigate their toxic influence or prevent them from harming a child by eliminating homeschooling. Most bad parents still send their kids to public school. Public school is not a remedy for abuse.

[carlob]

> You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious that the United States could spend much more on education and do a much better job with the schools they have. Pinning any significant portion of the "huge cost" of the current system on middle class homeschoolers seems like sophistry intended to avoid the abuses of the hyper-capitalist, atomized system and ignores the actual problem.

I think you're exaggerating the negative effects of sending almost everybody to public schools. Look at Scandinavia, France, Germany (or even southern European countries), the vast majority of people goes to public schools and it's not like the advancement of humanity has stopped there. A similar argument can be made for socialized medicine, a highly privatized system like the American one ends up being: more expensive, more iniquitous and less effective. If you really think that dismantling or undermining the public school system is not going to end like the medical system in the US, well I don't know how to convince you.

[surge]

I think you're looking at different school systems and using it to leverage criticisms of home schooling in the US.

Fix public schooling in the US first, make it so it isn't so easy for home schoolers to out perform. Don't make kids guinea pigs while you figure out how to fix it. Then and only then can you level a critical eye on US home schoolers if the vast majority weren't doing a better job than public schools. If you're going to advocate for public school in the US, advocate in what ways that schools today by majority statistics are better than home schooling (socialization actually isn't one of them). Because all I see is a system that is 100 years out of date, anti-science (in terms of teaching methodology and pedagogy versus neuroscience and child development studies) and throwing money at problems that goes to the administrators not to teacher pay or reducing class sizes or anything substantial.

[carlob]

> Fix public schooling in the US first

This is like people saying to fix the bus system before adding bus lanes that would increase congestion for cars. The system is broken because smarter kids or kids who come from more educated families are escaping it. The effect is that public schools in the US are becoming like public transportation in the US: only those who don't have any other option are using it.

[surge]

You have a very narrow view of home schooling and only the worse cases. Take a look at the worse outcomes of public schooling and the averages in performance of home school kids versus public school kids. The social anxiety and other issues of kids going through a modern high school versus kids who socialize with mostly adults and socialize in sports programs, co-ops, or groups and learn to be self driven in learning.

Public schools have a long way to go before they should be made mandatory. Until it is the very best solution for everyone, until it addresses every learning disability, the class sizes are smaller, teachers are paid better, classes track with a students ability and mental development and actually run in line with the latest in neuroscience and child development, have flexible hours so teenagers can sleep longer, put less on the kids when they go home so they have time for family activities and social interaction instead of 3-4 hrs of homework. Maybe when the solution isn't to medicate kids who don't learn by sitting still at a desk 6 hours a day with few breaks, elimination of recess and 20-30 minute lunch periods and few if any opportunities to "socialize" in the current schooling environment. When they teach problem solving and critical thinking, rather than rote memorizing for one standardized test at the end of year. If going to school was more like being an adult or put responsibilities on the student, like a college does, rather than treating the student population like they're in a low security prison. When it uses a system that wasn't developed for training factory workers and hasn't transitioned at all since then. When all the new money added to their budgets isn't siphoned up in administrative costs. When schools in many neighborhoods put kids in physical danger, involve gang activity and a good option simply isn't available to them because of their district. Then maybe we can talk about making it mandatory.

Even then, the most rich and privileged still would have loop holes for tutoring their kids for something other than factory work. We would still need exceptions for kids who for a variety of reasons, medical or otherwise need to be at home, students who travel or work in acting/performance. Kids who are on specialized career tracks in schools geared towards where its best they learn very young (perforamance arts and music, CS) to compete in a global market.

This idea that one education fits all is myopic and doesn't line up with the results that public schools produce thus far, and you want to take away any alternative.

It would be like if the only healthcare option in the US was the VA, and no one was allowed to seek healthcare else where because some people make bad health decisions and go to homeopathic healthcare providers.

[ryanobjc]

In America we've had decades of various people attacking public schools. So to look at the state of public schools and saying this is how things are, well you're ignoring a broad history of American conservatism taking objection to public schooling.

[surge]

Right, so fix that first, don't tell people they have to go to a certain school while you spend another 30+ years figuring it out.

Also blaming it on just conservatism is silly, the bluest most democratic districts have some of the worst problems and solutions. Administrators keep thinking more of the same and blanket solutions address the needs of every kid. They forget that children are individuals. If this were the case, schools in very liberal areas like D.C., Chicago, LA, etc would be amazing and all producing the very best students given their funding and that the school board would be incredibly liberal/progressive.

Talk to teachers, many of them that burn out or leave because of how bad its gotten home school their own kids because they've seen the sausage factory.

Addendum (how bad its really gotten):

https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/15/robots...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/29/social-jetlag/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086098

https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-...

https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/teen-suspended-for-inciting-vi...

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/9isnux/teacher_says_s...

https://www.greensboro.com/opinion/columns/christie-murphy-w...

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/8smwb6/lawsuit_school...

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/7p69uk/teacher_arre...