[ARandomerDude]

The glaring deficiency of public school is the inability to train your child's character for most of the day. You hope that the teachers and students have similar values to you. Some do, many don't.

I want my children to be honest, thoughtful, compassionate, diligent, respectful, and courageous. These aren't society's values today so I homeschool.

[Gigachad]

This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it. It’s borderline control freak behaviour if not over the line most of the time. Usually to force some kind of religious beliefs on their kids and keep them away from any kids with other opinions.

[Eleison23]

People, especially parents, with religious faith do not view it this way. It is not "force" to hand down our faith and inculcate our children with values based on loving God and loving neighbor. Only viewed from the outside does this appear to have some kind of coercivity or violence associated with it. On the contrary, we view this as the most precious gift we can give to a child.

I endured more than my fair share of childhood trauma. Yet, my adoptive parents presented me in church for baptism and the other sacraments. We attended Mass on a regular basis. We were sent to Catholic school and taught to cherish high moral standards for ourselves and our friends. I rejected this all for over 11 years, but I came to see the wisdom and value in such an upbringing. Now I accept the Christian faith voluntarily, with free will; there is no force or coercion or violence involved.

[ausbah]

sure it's not coercive or violent in most cases, but that's all you get in a religious household. a child may not like going to church, prayer, the thought of a higher power, etc. but that's all they'll be getting. maybe that wasn't the case for you, but at least in all the cases I know of there isn't really room for deviation beyond a certain bounds

participation in the rituals is mandatory, lack of belief is not optional, and heaven forbid something fundamental about you cross the line (i.e. try being gay or transgender in a religious household). that little word "inculcate" puts it pretty well - indoctrination by forced repetition. you view it as passing a gift along, some bearing the end of the gift view it as torment

[watwut]

> People, especially parents, with religious faith do not view it this way. It is not "force" to hand down our faith and inculcate our children with values based on loving God and loving neighbor.

If it involves more then negligible amount of spanking in the "how to train your baby" style or emotional manipulation, it absolutely is coercive.

As in, there is such a thing as healthy amount of teaching your faith. There is also religious based abuse. And then there is someone saying "glaring deficiency of public school is the inability to train your child's character for most of the day" which do suggest overbearing amount of it.

[Eleison23]

I have no idea what sort of connection can be made between spanking and the Christian faith, other than your own negative perceptions from outside.

[watwut]

One connection is how to train your baby books I mentioned. The foundation most popular book is named "To Train Up a Child". They are literal Christian child raising books that teach how to property spank. These and similar books/approaches are recommended inside fundamentalist circles, unknow or controversial outside them. Christians openly advocating for these approaches is just normal in more fundamental circles (by which I mean I personally knew such people and they are not even all that much fundamentalist, just tilted that way).

[Eleison23]

And atheists and agnostics would not ever strike their own children, or their students?

[ausbah]

you don't recognize there's any sort of historical pattern between religion, at least w the more extremist parts, and punitive punishments? conversion therapy, Indian boarding schools, child wilderness camps, Catholic sex abuse scandals are just a few that pop to mind

[sfink]

> This is why the majority of homeschool parents do it.

I strongly doubt that. It may have been true at some point, I don't know. It was certainly my stereotype growing up several decades ago. But now that I'm homeschooling and in contact with numerous other homeschooling families, I haven't really seen it. At all.

Other areas could certainly be different. Here, in the SF Bay Area, it's mostly about parents who see their kids just not thriving in one way or another at traditional school, and not really having any effective levers to do something about it while staying within the system. So yeah, there's an element of control, but only of the environment and opportunities available. Especially today, I'm skeptical that controlling the landscape of their peers' opinions is even possible. I guess it is for younger kids, when you could restrict their access to devices for anything but academic purposes. But generally there's just too much stuff to be doing in your own life and setting up and managing the kids' classes and activities—it'd be tough to micromanage their beliefs and values or whatever even if you wanted to. It's not that different from traditional schooling in the end.

[pnathan]

> I want my children to be honest, thoughtful, compassionate, diligent, respectful, and courageous. These aren't society's values today so I homeschool.

The number of people who have good values who don't homeschool demonstrates that it is not required.