What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.
I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic
Except that even what you're testing them on may not be really the most useful or applicable stuff. Any such testing would need to take into account what they actually have been doing and learning. Since the point of much learning is to be able to do, looking at accomplishment is super important. And a productive evaluation of people like the subject here might be challenging to system educators with a vested interest in our factory schooling.
The normal requirements we expect in an industrialized society are the basics of reading and writing, and some math. Unschooling sure has its benefits, but the child will have to navigate an adult world where that is table stakes. We don’t want to consign students to a life of poverty because of a lack of literacy. https://archive.ph/1xaHW
I think the challenge is less about the mechanics (reading, writing) and more about the content expressed via these, as there has to be some element of common content as well.
Their criteria is pretty basic “you need to be able to comprehend a 800-word news article”, and we are often failing to meet those standards with alternative education (which isn’t even just homeschooling, parochial systems have issues here too.)
At the end of the day, a service worker needs to be able to read the prices being wrung up on the cash register, and a factory worker should be able to read an instruction manual and safety rules. Not meeting those basic standards basically relegates you to a very small amount of jobs.
I've heard there's evidence that delaying literacy and numeracy has meaningful and potentially desirable effects on brain development. If a child and parents want to test that out, why not allow them to do so?
Yes if you mean starting to teach them read and write at 7 instead of at 5.
No if you mean cutting away majority of curriculum and teaching the rest by having kid doing sheets alone on kitchen table until isolated bored kid slows or gives up.
The US school system seems different than mine, and although we have issues, if only for the socialization, being in school is better than not.
Especially, what my father explained to me (he directed projects and extracurricular 'homework help' (+ free food) for kids in the poor neighborhood of my city at the time) was that the most important for success in school was parental implication, and that if you compared kids in 'regular' school with present and interested parents (often children of teachers, or children with one stay at home parent and few siblings) to kids in 'special school' (Montessori at the time i think), there was no practical difference on their success later. He told us his job was to try his best to have his street educators bridge the gap between parents and school, and if it wasn't possible, to offer a more collective and affirmative way of learning/doing in his extracurricular center.
(weird translation, sorry if it isn't understandable, there is a lot of specific vocabulary i tried to simplify then translate).
It was only his impression, but I've worked with children from my 14th birthday to my 25th, and my personal experience (i taught science through experiment with an association both at public schools and at summer camps) tends to confirm that what's really matter in engagement from the parents.
The experience of schooling varies so incredibly much depending on where you lived and when you attended that all of these conversations are kind of... pointless to have with anonymous people (probably) far away.
I feel like abuse is a stretch of a word. His parents's hands were tied and he stepped up. If you asked him, he was running the family and doing it well. His success in strife should be celebrated even if it wasn't an ideal growing environment.