[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...

[merpnderp]

Socioeconomic status doesn’t explain why parents with only high school degrees who homeschool in the US will still have kids performing at the top of public school kids’ scores, while strong parental involvement does. Over and over the only truly meaningful external factor in student performance is parental involvement, of which homeschooling is highly indicative.

[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.

[hawkesnest]

If I can demonstrate that the results of my "crazy" homeschooling is commensurate with (or surpasses) those of public schools, then what difference does it make. Yes, public school teachers have skills. Do those skills apply directly to the homeschool setting? Is there a difference between attempting to teach the one or two or so offspring compared to a classroom of strangers? Are parents incapable of attaining the necessary skills through any means besides university?

If it were reasonable to achieve "doctor" level results of medical care without being a doctor, then I would agree with you. The evidence shows otherwise. If I were getting poor results with my kids, they'd be back in public school.

[jacobolus]

If we spent as much societal resources on elementary education as on healthcare, and schools had teams of intensively trained specialists come in and work with students 1:1 for many hours every week in the area of their expertise, then I would concede your point.

But a single conscientious and patient parent working 1:1 with a child consistently over the course of years is going to beat out a string of generalist teachers managing a 30-student classroom almost every time.

It takes a teacher/class months of overhead at the beginning of each year just to get to know all of the students and figure out what their skills and preparation are. It takes hours of overhead every day coordinating big groups of students, some of whom don’t want to be in a setting that inherently compromises their autonomy and often disrespects them, even in the best case where the teacher is kind and progressive. Feedback on student work is delayed and sometimes mediocre because carefully examining the work of 30 students takes a huge amount of time and effort. Glaring student misconceptions and gaps in basic knowledge and skills are allowed to persist for years. Generally little support is given to help students get over psychological blocks related to particular subjects or activities. Students are frequently cruel to each-other and teachers are often unaware or don’t have the available bandwidth to deal with it.

There is a categorical difference between lecturing to a class of 30 vs. direct tutorial, and the latter is generally much, much easier and more pleasant for both teacher and pupil.

[toasterlovin]

The hard part of being a teacher isn’t teaching the material, it’s managing 20-30 kids. Homeschoolers don’t have to deal with that.

[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.