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Comments
You realize anecdotes have nothing to do with statistics, right?
Anyway, I was homeschooled for non-ideological reasons through middle school because there weren't any non-shit schools in my area. Wasn't for ideological reasons, but I wouldn't describe it as good for me. It's probably where I got all my anxiety issues.
Yes, but "since the US has a majority of homeschooling being ideologically motivated, clearly even more homeschooling in other countries is" is a ridiculous connection to make.
I was homeschooled, in some sense, early in elementary school and late in high school (depending on whether you consider an online program "homeschooled", which some apparently do).
It was not for ideological reasons, but rather because the local public schools had no idea how to deal with a student on the autism spectrum.
*obligatory jab at homeschooled IJBMers for being a QED of the aforementioned negative sides of homeschooling*
I'm curious, how much freedom did your parents have in picking the curriculum?
As long as I went in to the middle school a couple times a year to take the same benchmark tests as everyone else and scored well, the school didn't really care about the details.
Homeschooling is illegal in Serbia, and public education is mandatory.
I can see homeschooling justified in case the child has special needs that the education system has trouble catering to, or the kid's home is in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, but anything else is just unnecessary.
I was homeschooled because our schooling system is terrible, too wishy-washy to enforce any kind of discipline with bullies, and moved at such a glacial pace that it slowed me down academically. I'm not really convinced that classes me as "special needs".
As for parenting, I'll refrain from criticizing how someone does it insofar as it doesn't produce obnoxious a-holes. Like, I get that crying happens, but a good parent will at least take them outside so they don't disrupt everything in the building. When they start running around shrieking like banshees when they're more than old enough to know better, and the parent isn't doing anything to stop them, fuck that.
There's this one lady in my church who has three kids, two of them are literally on leashes and regularly run around interrupting the service (she doesn't use the soundproofed cry room), and the poor middle kid behaves mostly on the grounds that the other two annoy her so badly she doesn't want to be seen with them. And the lady is about to have a fourth.
Many kids today are really acting like complete twats, and it's quite worrying, especially since one day they will also have children.
People say that it's because of the lack of discipline, but I disagree - if anything, kids should be thought to think for themselves; I think that what's much more problematic is that so many parents, consciously or unconsciously, permeate the idea that the entire world revolves around the kids; above all they should learn to have respect for other people and their needs.
Being a guinea pig is fun
That said if I ever father a kid they will be homeschooled because so far my family has a nasty history of violent tempers when things don't go right and I'd rather not be the father of a kid that got tasered due to his disorder
Socializing would be part of the homeschooling
cirriculumciricculumthing. And copious amounts of dictionary use on my partObviously, unnecessary use of passive voice is the true cause of twattage in kids.
My contention was not with voice, but with present tense.
Because when has any kid anywhen not been a twat?
I've met plenty of well-behaved kids. Hell, my sister was one. They're usually the ones that their parents don't let them get away with being twats.
Indeed, here largely, too, though exceptions can be made. It's very rare, though. And really, the thought of doing it because the schools around one are too bad... that just doesn't exist here. That's what I meant earlier: It's a common enough thought in America, I know, but not here. And yet even so, even in America the number of parents who do it at least partially for ideological reasons runs up to 72%. So I bet it would be a higher percentage, out of a way smaller absolute number, here.
But then I guess the USA has to struggle with its usual problems, like too low population density. I guess that can lead to having so few schools around one that they all can suck. Also, the concept of school districts really does encourage the divide in really good and really bad schools, I think.
Yeah, that's the main problem. It's really funny how everybody here complains about the "kids nowadays (and get off my lawn!)" are undisciplined, rude or whatever. Yeah, like that's not been said about every single generation of kids since Homo started walking upright. Probably H.Erectus already grunted how the kids of today are too lazy to hunt, cannot make a proper spear stone and have no respect for the holy fire. Or something like that. Kids will be kids, and that means they will be unbehaved at times and will be annoying. The problem is not that this happens, and I don't think parents nowadays are worse parents to their children - the problem is that nowadays it seems they have no regards to others. As you say, if your kid cries in a public building - well, it's a kid. That's not something inherently bad. But you take them outside to calm down, instead of letting them annoy everybody else around. And while it's understandable how bored children will get on train travels, you still don't let them run up and down the wagon again and again for an entire hour... grrr... ehem.
It's an issue often brought forth in that regard, but really, that's not even my main worry. School is great for meeting other kids, but alternative avenues do exist. But what's great about school is that it is an avenue the parents can't completely control. And that in turn means the child will inevitably be confronted with ideas there that may not be of the parents' liking. And that in turn is important, no, imperative in pluralistic societies.
As pluralistic, democratic, free societies we surely want people to grow up to think for themselves. It's what our entire societies are based on! Well, theoretically at least. And surely that is the best for the child's welfare, too, to grow up with the whole wide world of ideas open to them, and the ability to choose what to think for themselves. But this can't just mean that as adults we have the formal right to do so, that isn't enough. What good is the right if we don't have the ability? Children are malleable. If one keep them isolated from certain ideas and surrounded with one's own ideological bubble all day long, then they will go on to live in that bubble, too. Unless and until something happens in their life changing that (which of course is always possible), they hence de facto cannot choose what's outside the bubble. They'll have all the rights in the world to choose what to think, but not the ability.
And that's something a free, pluralistic society shouldn't accept, IMO, for the welfare of the child themselves! And don't tell me this kind of homeschooling doesn't exist. Sure, it isn't all there is to homeschooling, and you can get your child confronted with wider society in other ways, and I'm sure the people here who have been homeschooled will say they have been. That's great - but it really isn't the entire story.
Schools are a great counter to that problem, because no matter what lunatic rightwing/leftwing/fundamentalist beliefs the parents may have, schools provide the mainstream alternative. Which isn't to say I want every child growing up to think only mainstream thoughts, but the thing is, this enables children even from those kinda households to choose what to think while they grow up. Contrary to what some raving-at-the-mouth ultraconservatives say, public education is not "leftwing indoctrination" - it cannot be indoctrination, period: School classes only take up so much of the day, and of course the considerable to say at least influence of the parents on the child remains. That's what my entire argument is about: A child growing up should have several influences on them, and school is the best way to ensure that.
You're missing the fact that even if school only takes up so much of the day, the amount of attention, care, and worry put into it completely outweighs everything else. I mean sure, there are clubs, parents, television, etcetera. But for a young person, school is everything that matters because everyone tells them so.
What utter nonsense. Unless it's the kind of inattentive parent who's never there, parents remain the greatest influence in the lives of children, even after the children have entered school. School can at best hope to offer an alternative in thought, but it won't actually have more influence on the child.
Also realize that the current economic climate in the US pretty much requires both parents to work ungodly hours just to stay afloat.
Hell, most of my homeschooling was by myself while they were at work.
On kids being annoying in public: I don't see how shushing a loud kid or aping a kid throwing a tantrum to shut him up is in any way breaching a parent's territory. The latter actually netted me a thanks from a mom one time.
I'm fine with homeschooling as long as the kid's progress is checked once in a while. Basically, if the parents can teach their kid a standard curriculum on their own, then good for them.
Education alone is not the only factor to a child growing up.
So I don't say the kid can't play around.
Yes. And kids were social rejects who never interacted with each other before schools were invented because schools are the only possible way for children to make friends with other children. Silly Gacek.
Well, somebody didn't read my earlier posts.
Someone stopped reading your posts as soon as you said "Face it, brainwashing is the primary reason for homeschooling." because seriously, fuck that.
Well, if you want to ignore statistics, or refuse to take into consideration that brainwashing IS a reason for homeschooling, then that's your prerogative. But in that case, don't try to argue that topic with others.
Oh, for the love of Christ.
>Christ
It's already too late, he has been brainwashed by the Cult of the First Zombie. :0
I somehow doubt the widow's son in Kings was a prominent enough figure to get a cult of his own.
Freemasons, sort of?
Thinking about the percentage of crazies in homeschooling, I guess it also depends on the percentage of crazies in society. The US has that 72%, but American crazies also form a strong and relatively coherent community. There is the cultural idea of homeschooling as the education in fundie-friendly form, which ensures enough fundies interested in it to keep it running, and enough of an industry to cater to those willing. Elsewhere, the fundies might be too weak to promote homeschooling-as-fundie-education.
I think the reverse is true: The USA has a tradition of homeschooling, period. Also, admittedly, for other than ideological reasons, so much that in fact homeschooling for non-ideological reasons is also big in the USA (yes, yes, I know that, that it's not just religion and ideology). But here that tradition is lacking. Everybody sends their child to a school, be it public or private or whatever. To not do so is practically unthinkable - so to speak, something only crazies would do, and hence it is in fact something only the religious crazy do. So, as a result, there is far less homeschooling here, but I'd imagine that smaller sector is even more dominated by fundamentalists.