[Oxx]

Good. The current state of the world is incredibly unnatural when you compare it to even 50 years ago. Everything is too connected. We are so much more efficient, but so much more fragile. The best thing you can do to save the world is save yourself and your family. Less fragility, more robustness at the personal / local level.

I am mid twenties, and was homeschooled my entire childhood. My father owned a technology company, and brought me to work with him most days. People talk about homeschooling being damaging due to the lack of exposure to the "real world", but I have had more exposure to reality than most, due to the constant exposure to actual working life.

Don't be afraid of "sheltering" your children by not having them be part of the system. There is so much more out there than the system. Your kids will turn out weird vs other kids raised in the standard environment, but its a good kind of weird.

My family was very involved with the homeschooling movement in our state, so I am more exposed than most to the sub-culture. Feel free to ask me any more specific questions.

[thephyber]

> but its a good kind of weird.

This isn't guaranteed.

A counterexample is Tara Westover[1] who grew up in an extremist version of what you are describing. She ultimately became successful but it was mostly despite her parents isolation from "the system", not because of them.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/02/20/587244230/memoirist-retraces-...

[ghufran_syed]

In what education system are outcomes guaranteed?

The story you linked to is pretty interesting, but she clearly states she was allowed to learn (just not forced to), she obviously understood what a university was, and had the desire and ability to apply and be accepted to university at an age when her parents would have had the legal right to stop her if they so wished - they obviously supported her application. Her outcome was clearly a lot better than many students who go to public school.

[marta_morena_25]

This story is fascinating (you really should read the whole book). But using her as example is completely misleading. She is a genius (I think). Very similar to the movie "Good Will Hunting". She got accepted into Cambridge with little to no education whatsoever. Even if you are a genius, this is not easy, since you just have to understand the system to some extend, no matter how smart you are, to be accepted into it.

Suffices to say, millions would fail under similar conditions, where she succeeded. Odds in normal education are much better than that.

[thephyber]

I interpreted "the system" of your GP as wider society, not just the normal public education system, because of the first paragraph.

Also, yes Tara was given lots of autonomy early in her education, but she was completely unprepared for the world even at BYU (her undergraduate university), she struggled through many years of therapy, and she claims she was admitted to Cambridge because of luck (on top of lots of talent and hard work) because she still needed lots of remedial coursework to catch up. One interesting quote from a (TED?) talk she gave is that her early childhood was spent reading early Mormon scripture, so she spoke and wrote with the character of a mid-19th century LDS prophet when she arrived at university.

[dmm]

I went to public schools for 12 years and I still turned out weird. No guarantees either way.

I think the view that homeschooled kids are weird is caused less by homeschooling and more by the fact that weirdos are more likely to homeschool.

[AnimalMuppet]

Let's say your kid is "weird" - on the autism spectrum, or ADD, or has severe allergies, or whatever. That can often cause problems in school, because children are often cruel. Parents of such children may be more likely to homeschool them than parents of kids that better fit the "normal" pattern.

Let's say the kid turns out a little weird. Would they have turned out better going through the public school system?

It's not necessarily fair to blame the homeschooling if the kids come out different. What were they at the start?

[eaandkw]

At this point I am even sure that being more efficient is better. From the context of economic opportunity the only ones that benefit are the rich and well connected. Now, I'm not one to bash "rich people" but think about it. If I was looking for a good deal for some land I could probably find one if I looked hard enough. Today it is pretty difficult to find land that isn't insanly expensive or too far away. Everything has already been bought up. The people that are well off and connected already learned 20 or 30 years ago where the land development were going to happen and they already bought the land.

As far as homeschooling is concerned. I spent 20 years in the military and the only thing that I observed that was a little awkward about the people that were home schooled was how they were around "authority". Meaning that they weren't as submissive to authority like everyone that went to a normal public school.

[cortesoft]

> At this point I am even sure that being more efficient is better. From the context of economic opportunity the only ones that benefit are the rich and well connected.

I think you are really underselling how awful life has been in the past.

Just look at things like child mortality rates.... historically, nearly HALF of all people died during childhood. That is insane. The global rate is now about 1/10 of that.

Similar changes have been made to starvation and malnourishment, with today's rates so much lower than historically.

This would not be possible without the improvements in efficiency over the years. Because we need so few people to grow enough food to feed everyone, we can spend the resources on medical research and advancements that have allowed our health outcomes to improve so much.

Are the gains of an efficient society unequally distributed? Of course. But let's solve the inequality problem by sharing the gains, not destroying the gains.

Yes, if we got rid of our efficiency gains, we would be more equal... because everyone would be much poorer.

We would still have people exploiting others, though. That happened way before we were efficient.

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past

[eaandkw]

Don't get me wrong about the efficiency gains. To a point I think it is great. But when everything is maximally efficient there is nothing to gain. Sure we could disrupt yet another industry but for every winner there is a loser.

Starvation and malnourishment are drastically lower due to industrial farming. But that was to the detrement of destroyed ecosystems, pollution, and greater government regulations. Heck, I believe that I was Michigan that was trying to prevent people from purchasing seeds to plant their own gardens.

Don't worry. I'm not actually all doom and gloom. I just don't think we are on the right track and we are heading of course. And this has been going on for a lot longer than 2016.

[diogenescynic]

I don't think homeschooling is usually like you're describing. Most of the people I have met who were homeschooled were not social adjusted or developed and didn't seem 'normal' by most standards. Most of them had parents who were either extremely religious or some other ideological tendency (survivalist, etc).

[slowhand09]

My nephews kids are homeschooled. They have a rigorous curriculum, specific goals, etc. They also have regular socialization activity with other homeschoolers. They just choose to not settle for the mediocrity, nor accept the indoctrination pushed by the education system.

[diogenescynic]

No offense, but this is where it starts getting weird and into the whole "society is bad!" that seems pretty extreme:

>They just choose to not settle for the mediocrity, nor accept the indoctrination pushed by the education system.

Most people I know who went to public schools came out fairly well. I refuse to share this elitist/ideological attitude towards them. What indoctrination? Don't you think that's a rather general and blanket statement considering how varied each school district is? Maybe that's more of a criticism of how schools are run in your area.

[sv123]

> Most people I know who went to public schools came out fairly well. I refuse to share this elitist/ideological attitude towards them. What indoctrination? Don't you think that's a rather general and blanket statement considering how varied each school district is? Maybe that's more of a criticism of how schools are run in your area.

That's exactly what someone who has been indoctrinated at a public school would say!

/s

[tremon]

What indoctrination?

Is the Pledge Of Allegiance still a thing at schools?

[dragonwriter]

> Most of the people I have met who were homeschooled

The people you have met are probably not a representative sample of the population you would like to generalize to from your experience.

[jyounker]

The same can be said of those on the other side too.

[diogenescynic]

One anecdote counters another.

[rahimnathwani]

The ideology is the common-causal variable.

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

[amanaplanacanal]

If you as a parent are grappling with the idea of homeschooling, know that you don’t have to do it the way those parents did. What you saw is not an indictment of homeschooling, but of those parents that decided to do it that way.

[diogenescynic]

I took the GRE in 9th grade and started taking classes at a community college. There are alternative paths out there where you can still socialize. There are more MOOCs and online schools, but I still think learning to deal with others is a real skill that you have to develop and is immensely important in life.

[kyrra]

How many people have you met that were homeschooled but you just didn't know it? Hard to really quantify something unless you ask the question of every person you've met.

[Oxx]

See my other reply [0] for more. I think the word homeschooling groups together to many different things. Something like "distributed schooling" feels better for my experience, and the people in my community.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874714

[nopinsight]

How do parents help their kids learn once they reach middle school or high school level and the materials get more challenging?

I understand that many good online courses exist but they are not full substitutes of in-person discussions and personalized feedback for essays, for example. It can take quite a bit of time to understand or even review materials. Some families might not have the necessary background as well.

[Oxx]

Personally, my mother was good at writing, so she taught that subject until I was 12. After that, there was a local writing teacher who taught an equivalent of comp 1, and comp 2.

My father taught math and programming. We did a mix of typical tutoring, and self study. Lots of self study since I had a natural aptitude for it.

From my experience, the horror stories you hear about kids being stuck in the middle of nowhere with only a bible to read are not the norm, and not what most "homeschoolers" advocate for. Even the word homeschool is a misnomer, a large amount of my time was spent at a local co-op with other "homeschoolers". My wifes youngest brother spends 4 out of 5 days split across two local co-ops. Her eldest brother is in a PhD program after the same experience. Most of the homeschoolers I know are more than able to function in modern society. Homeschooling simply allows for a much more tailored and less systematized schooling experience, making each family educational experience more akin to a startup in its ability to be nimble and respond to individual needs.

[nvahalik]

You learn with them, basically. Or you find other people in your community that can help. I’m not sure about others but most people don’t homeschool in isolation.

[cortesoft]

> Or you find other people in your community that can help.

But that is school.

[AnimalMuppet]

It may be "school", but it's not at a public school building. It's wherever the co-op meets, or wherever your mentor is.

[cortesoft]

So a private school

[stainforth]

Can your dad take every other kid to work with him too?