[kevingadd]

I'm bothered that this article seems to believe that the rise in homeschooling (in large part by unqualified parents using low-quality textbooks and ill-considered strategies) is another example of people 'opting out' of some particular brand of oppression by the State, and that doing so will increase supply, or something?

As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.

And yes, there are some parents who do a great job homeschooling; I'm sure of it. I've just never met them, and I was extensively involved in local homeschooling programs back in my home town, so I interacted with dozens of homeschooling families, hundreds of homeschooled kids, and visited some of the organized conventions and programs that involved thousands more. Too many of these people simply aren't qualified to teach a child from the beginning up to college age, even if they may have the legal freedom to do it.

As it relates to the article's premise: I also think individuals have a right to reasonable health because it is integral to their future. A nation full of sick people is going to be a nation with low productivity and a high tax burden from running things like emergency rooms. It is in our best interest to offer everyone affordable access to some basic minimum level of health care, and to do so in the cheapest possible manner. The author seems to believe that a comparison shopping website for doctors will deliver affordable health care to everyone, but I think he ignores a few essential issues that could make it impossible for such a website to deliver good results:

a) Even now, many people who need health care do not have regular access to the internet. This is in part due to the huge stretches of rural America, but it is also due to the fact that we have a huge homeless population and a huge low-income population, both of whom may not even be able to afford the equipment necessary to get on the internet. You certainly aren't going to propose giving them free equipment and internet access so they can go buy health care on a website.

b) It is arguably impossible to comparison shop for essential health care. You don't have the time to waste on it and you are emotionally/mentally compromised by the stress of your impending doom. To a degree, this is correct - you should be prioritizing your own well-being. It should be the responsibility of everyone else in the system to try and keep costs for this essential care to a minimum; instead, a profit-driven health system tries to maximize profit off this essential care, and deny claims to as many dying people as possible. Introducing more profit motive into this system does not seem like it will fix anything.

c) Medical practice over the internet without licenses is simply a recipe for disaster. I am willing to accept that a licensed doctor could perhaps perform a subset of their duties over the internet; I occasionally email my doctor instead of visiting them in person when I need minor adjustments to medicine doses, and that is fine - both sides are fully informed and no corners are being cut. However, if you're not even going to license them to verify that they meet the basest standards of medical competence, you'd be mad to also let them practice without ever seeing a patient in person. It's just a bad idea. We have enough issues with malpractice and patients being sold treatments they don't need as things are; removing licensing and medical standards will make this worse as both of those problems can be increased by a profit motive.

d) Comparison shopping for long-term health care seems nearly impossible since in many cases, if you discover the care you are getting is suboptimal, it is too late to switch - whether because of pre-existing conditions, or because the care is ongoing and transferring to another provider would put you at risk. You can't trivially ask to have your dying father moved to an intensive care unit across town just to save a couple thousand dollars, even if you CAN do it.

[dragonwriter]

> As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be.

Sounds like the solution is to: 1) Define what a "high quality education" means in terms that it is objectively measurable whether one is being provided to a child, 2) Assure that children, regardless of education venue (home, private, or public school) are receiving it.

Assuming that certain venues do provide a "high quality education" and that other venues do not -- in any direction -- doesn't seem particularly useful if that is a genuine concern rather than a superficial rationalization.

[smacktoward]

> Sounds like the solution is to: 1) Define what a "high quality education" means in terms that it is objectively measurable

Um, good luck with that.

[yaddayadda]

A collaborative attempt to do so has lead to the Common Core - http://www.corestandards.org/ - which "... define the rigorous skills and knowledge in English Language Arts and Mathematics that need to be effectively taught and learned for students to be ready to succeed academically in credit-bearing, college-entry courses and in workforce training programs." and ability to measure attainment was one of their internal requirements during the development process (http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Criteria.pdf).

[kevingadd]

The point is not that homeschooling provides a lower quality education than public schools (though I would argue that, on average, it does) - the point is that homeschooling is being done by unqualified people using unverified, quickly-considered techniques, while public schooling is at least largely done by people who got teaching certifications and their methods get public scrutiny.

To me, the amount of criticism public schools receive is an indicator of their worthiness - people are able to inspect the education and intervene directly if they feel it is inadequate, and the government has the ability to provide useful oversight and assist in setting standards. I'm sure there are many cases where this centralization is to children's detriment, but at least it is a largely transparent system.

In comparison, the only real transparency provided into a homeschooled child's education is when they start college and have to find out whether they really learned enough essential skills and information to be able to compete in a real educational environment. If the answer is 'no', it's too late to do anything.

Objective measurements would be great, and so would more rigorous enforcement. Historically, homeschooling groups are against both.

[dragonwriter]

> The point is not that homeschooling provides a lower quality education than public schools (though I would argue that, on average, it does) - the point is that homeschooling is being done by unqualified people using unverified, quickly-considered techniques

Sometimes.

Othertimes, its being done by highly qualified professional educators who are intimately familiar with their students and who spend a lot of energy on researching educational methods specific to their student(s), with far greater focus than when they are having 150 students passed by them each day on a conveyer belt.

Would I like to guarantee that no child is subjected to the former? Certainly. Would I accept the cost of preventing children from benefitting from the latter to do it? No.

> while public schooling is at least largely done by people who got teaching certifications and their methods get public scrutiny.

Yeah, and restaurants are at least subject to inspections for compliance with requirements of facilities and methods, whereas home cooking is done by unqualified people using unverified, quickly considered techniques.

But what I cook at home is consistently better than McDonald's, still.

Industrial mass production -- whether its of food, or education, or anything else -- is rarely of the highest attainable quality.

[baddox]

> the point is that homeschooling is being done by unqualified people using unverified, quickly-considered techniques, while public schooling is at least largely done by people who got teaching certifications and their methods get public scrutiny.

But still, you're assuming that unqualified (according to whose qualifications?) people using unverified (by whom?) techniques are worse on average than public schools.

It's not easy to agree on what objective measurements comprise "good schooling," but I think most people will agree that homeschooling and public schooling both vary wildly in quality if we were to agree upon some objective measurements. It's not fair to implement policies for either type of schooling based solely on the worst examples of that type of schooling.

[kevingadd]

I think it's reasonable to assume that unless anyone has proven the contrary, which they haven't. If you were replacing a public school with a private school, I'd agree that it is unwise to assume the private school is worse. We're talking about replacing an entire school staff with a couple overworked parents, though.

Many arguments in favor of homeschooling are about parents' religious freedom or about how the public school system has failed the children, and in both cases this does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to do a better job.

I do agree that objective measurements would allow this stuff to be considered rationally, but historically it's really hard to come up with useful objective measurements due to all of the different pressures involved.

[baddox]

> I think it's reasonable to assume that unless anyone has proven the contrary, which they haven't.

I disagree. I think it could go either way, as I have no real scientifically valid evidence either way, but I think the burden of proof is on the party advocating using violence to prevent the other party from doing what it wants.

> Many arguments in favor of homeschooling are about parents' religious freedom or about how the public school system has failed the children, and in both cases this does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to do a better job.

True, but it also does nothing to demonstrate that the parents are going to do a worse job.

[kevingadd]

Who said anything about violence? I think it's a pretty absurd leap to go from me expressing a negative opinion on homeschooling directly to me seemingly dispatching SWAT teams to round up homeschoolers.

[wtbob]

> Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be.

No, that's exactly what being a minor means. One's parents have the right to teach one whatever values, facts and fictions they wish, while one is a minor.

But don't worry too hard about it: teaching is _not_ hard. Almost any parent who cares enough to homeschool is capable of teaching his or her children better than a public school would (which is not a very high bar to clear).

As for your anecdotal belief that the homeschooling families you encountered were incapable, I wonder if it was really your belief that they would not teach what _you_ think is true and correct.

[kevingadd]

We're not talking about beliefs here, we're talking about utterly failing to prepare their children for high school exit exams and college and adult life, which is what many of those parents did.

You seem to think teaching is easy, which makes me wonder if you've ever even tried to do it. My time tutoring students in college definitely makes me skeptical of anyone who says teaching is easy, and none of the schoolteachers/college instructors I know say teaching is easy. It is hard work.

[mattchew]

> And yes, there are some parents who do a great job homeschooling; I'm sure of it. I've just never met them, and I was extensively involved in local homeschooling programs back in my home town, so I interacted with dozens of homeschooling families, hundreds of homeschooled kids, and visited some of the organized conventions and programs that involved thousands more.

If you have interacted with this many homeschoolers and never met any you thought were doing a great job, this might indicate something about homeschooling. Or, it might indicate something about you.

[kevingadd]

You can bust out lazy indirect ad-hominems all you like, but we're not talking about me here, we're talking about parents failing to educate their children, which is kind of a big deal. Your hurt feelings or personal religious faith can't really justify ruining other people's futures.

We're not talking about perfection here either; if someone decides to apply a different teaching style, or is okay with being relaxed and letting their kids take a slow approach to education, that's totally fine! I'm talking about parents utterly failing to prepare their children for college and for adult life, and I've watched that happen dozens of times. It inflicts tremendous emotional and mental harm on the kids and can destroy a decade or more of their life as they struggle to make up for it.

[mattchew]

I was talking about you, and the credibility of your views. There's lots of yelling on the internet, but most of it you shouldn't take seriously.

I do apologize to HN for helping hijack the thread.

[baddox]

It seems like your arguments assume that homeschooling is, at least on average, worse for the children than public schools. If homeschooling might be better for the child, then it doesn't make sense to talk about whether "parents have the right to deny" children public schooling.

[kevingadd]

The issue is not whether the average homeschooler is better or worse. The issue is the difficulties involved in ensuring homeschooling does not fail children. I was hoping the parallel between that and my later points about unlicensed doctors practicing over the internet would be somewhat evident.

My post didn't actually say that the average homeschooling education is worse for children than a public school, but I do happen to believe that it is :) This is, however, not based on scientifically-gathered data, so I would welcome data to the contrary.

[dllthomas]

Given how frequently public schooling fails children, I think we should probably be somewhat liberal about permitting other options.

[kevingadd]

Liberal is great, as long as we don't completely fail the children. Going too far in the other direction and failing the children worse is a pretty shameful response.

I can understand the desire to do the complete opposite of the public school system if you believe it is the source of all your woes, but it kind of defies rational logic to abandon things like objective measurements, professional training, etc.

[dllthomas]

In many areas, you're also abandoning drug dealers and metal detectors. I'm not convinced that - for some schools - simply keeping children out of those schools mightn't do more good than harm even before you start trying to educate. At which point, professional training is kind of irrelevant. Of course, for most of the children in those schools, their parents aren't very able to home-school either. Regarding objective measurements, measure away - I've no objection to measurement.

[eurleif]

>Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.

So the issue is that the parents are forcing a decision on the child, in violation of the child's rights? What if the child wants to be homeschooled?

[MattHeard]

Let's suppose that children have a claim-right to high-quality education. This claim-right implies that someone else has a duty to provide a high-quality education for those children.

Generally, that duty falls upon the parents and/or upon the state. The state attempts to fulfill its duty by attempting to provide high-quality public education for all children. Parents attempt to fulfill their duties by (1) providing their children with access to high-quality, public education; (2) providing their children with access to high-quality, private education; or (3) providing their children with high-quality education at home.

Many people disagree with the priorities of these duties (for example, whether the primary duty is on the parents or on the state) and many people disagree with whether any particular example of education counts as "high-quality" (for example, whether a particular teacher is doing a good or bad job at teaching a particular child).

Some people don't believe that children have a claim-right to high-quality education.

My opinion is that a child's claim-right to high-quality education is only violated when neither the state nor the parents provide this high-quality education. States generally provide public education in order to relieve parents from having to fulfill this duty themselves (because of cost or incompetence), while some parents choose to provide this education themselves or privately because they believe that the state fails to fulfill the duty because the education is not "high-quality".

There are people who fall outside of all of these groups as well, and I don't intend to dismiss them. Most people, however, fall into these groups.

With this interpretation of the claim-right of children to high-quality education, it is irrelevant whether the child wants to be homeschooled.

Here's a question: do children have a power-right to waive their claim-right to high-quality education?

[kevingadd]

That would be fine with me, but we have precedents establishing that minors are not well-equipped to make important decisions for themselves (at least until they're older). So I don't know if they can actually make that choice.

I know a couple kids who preferred homeschooling, but mostly because it was easier than going to school. That was to their detriment later on when they started college. I don't know if that makes it wrong, though. Education is definitely not one-size-fits-all.

You could make the libertarian/capitalist argument that if a child is really lazy and wants to do highly relaxed homeschooling that won't prepare them for college, that's fine, and they can just accept never having a good job or lifestyle, I guess? I don't really like that.

If the parent prefers homeschooling but doesn't have the time/energy to do it right, is that similarly fine? Or do they have an obligation to deliver their children an adequate education, just like they have an obligation to feed and care for them (otherwise the kids will be taken away)?

[eurleif]

Anecdote time: I was not just homeschooled, but unschooled. Unschooling basically means that instead of my parents teaching me, I was expected to learn on my own. They provided some direction and assistance, but they weren't especially well-equipped to teach, and I was always free to choose not to learn something, which I absolutely did do out of laziness sometimes.

I got very into programming, and when I was 18, I launched a Web site which succeeded wildly, and has been paying my bills ever since. I did fine on the SAT, and I had a 4.0 GPA during the year I spent in college. (I left after that to run my company.)

My feelings on unschooling are complicated. Knowing how it turned out, there is no way I would go back in time and make my parents send me to school. But I can easily imagine alternative outcomes where I end up dying in a ditch instead of starting a company. I don't think I would ever unschool a child myself.

But since I'm happy with how unschooling turned out for me, how can I support a law denying those potential benefits to everyone else? That's essentially a law against what caused me to be who I am. I'm fairly certain that if I'd been sent to school, I wouldn't have started my company. It was the result of endless hours of tinkering -- time I wouldn't have had if I'd been busy with homework.

It's a bit like doing a startup versus working a normal job. If you do the startup, you might lose all your cash and fail; but you also have a small chance of winning big. High risk, high reward. The job will give you consistent pay, with no chance of losing your hat; but also with no chance of a big win. Low risk, low reward.

High risk certainly isn't for everyone, but imagine a world where no one ever took risks.

[chimeracoder]

> As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.

I would really love to see tokenadult respond to this, because I know he has very strong (and informed) opinions on homeschooling.