[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.