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Yeah it's just a popular way for child abusers to not get caught.
The major homeschooling lobbyist group is insanely powerful, think NRA. There's basically ZERO checks/balances. They oppose all regulation of any sort, even shooting down laws meant only to protect kids.
The major homeschooling lobbyist group
Excuse me, the WHAT
John Oliver taught me the biggest one is the Home School Legal Defense Fund.
Every Sunday night I sit down to learn some valuable info from John ... like what a pūteketeke has to do to get laid.
Religion and the fear of "woke" things being taught to their children like evolution, sex education, history,science.....
Those people exist, but you should read the article for some more perspective. Trans children who faced bullying and black families who want to avoid systemic racism in the school system are also significant groups.
I have advanced college degrees in science/engineering, I watch electronics and chemistry videos for fun, and I wouldn’t feel qualified teaching most subjects past 6-7 grade. How some of these parents with just high school diplomas do it is beyond me.
I feel the most empathy toward the students who are taught these very myopic curriculums that are very weak in science and math (I’m looking at you young earth/creationists types) and who knows what about history (slavery gave African-Americans jobs skills?) that try to get into college. Most profs will not suffer fools like this even if by some miracle they get accepted in the first place.
How some of these parents with just high school diplomas do it is beyond me. They don't. I'm in the same boat. Technical Bachelors, MBA. We home schooled my son with a learning disorder for a year, primarily as a response to the school districts failure to do their job. It was not a success. While I still think it was the right decision, it was incredibly hard. Which is why it only lasted one year.
Sometimes parents homeschool because they want their kids to learn more. Sometimes they homeschool to have their children learn less.
Right Wing propaganda, and their concerted war against public education. They do this for two reasons:
1 - They're so greedy they hate paying taxes. Any taxes, even though they take full advantage of what taxes pay for (roads, police, fire department.)
2 - Illiterate and uneducated people will believe whatever they're told, and take whatever is offered. Those raised Christian are programmed from childhood to blindly obey male authority figures.
In short, Republicans want to create a Neo-Feudal Theocracy, with themselves as the aristocracy.
Im just gonna make a wild guess and say because "religious" nuts, isn it?
Ive always found the idea of homeschooling utterly bizzare
Homeschooling isnt bizzare in itself, the current and standard execution of it is, however, bizzare.
I know people who did it for religious reasons and I know people who did it because their kids needed extras to be able to attend school at all, and regular schools didn't have the staff and/or the ability, ie: one friend has an adopted son with FAS who, when he was stressed, needed to run outside around the building a few times before he could sit still for a few more hours.
He was finally able to graduate at 21 ... a crowning achievement for him and his family.
I was both religious and ultra hyper. Still wish I had friends growing up.
Idiots
Our school system offers online schooling and we had to put our daughter in it at least temporarily, because she was the most bullied kid in her school and it got to the point one day that she broke down and cried and said she couldn't go to that school one more day. So I'm glad that option is there, but I have big issues with it, especially with English, because the education company they contracted with only uses public domain texts and your average seventh grader whose experience with English has been books like Hatchet and The Giver, can't parse at all. Plus, it's stuff like H. H. Munro, who wrote stories about Edwardian English aristocrats, so she can't understand the texts both because of the language and the fact that she has no frame of reference. The English teacher I'm emailing about it doesn't seem to care, but I'm basically having to walk her through the lesson each time and go through the text slowly, reading it to her so she doesn't mess up all the hard words, and stopping every few sentences to explain to her what's going on. We've only been at it a week, and it's such a needless slog. She has no trouble at all with the parts of the English lessons that don't involve those texts. She understands all the concepts being taught. But 19th century literature is not appropriate for an average 7th grade reader.
Eventually, we want to get her into another middle school, but she needs a mental break from being around other kids to heal. This is ridiculous though, and I have no idea how other kids in this program get through it, because we were told everyone from kids with psychological issues to kids who were expelled are in the online school and I doubt those expelled kids are able to follow an O. Henry story about a safecracker full of slang with an ironic twist ending.
Theoretically, in Indiana, we could just pull her out of the school system entirely and find some other homeschool curriculum for her to follow. It's totally unregulated here. But then we wouldn't have anyone to turn to if we needed help. At least in this case, there's a teacher I can eventually browbeat into doing a tutoring session.
We're just lucky I'm on FMLA right now, otherwise she would just fail out of this entirely.
Sorry, not all that related to what is going on. I just needed to vent. I feel so trapped with my daughter.
I'd say school failings in dealing with bulling and with any student with a special need (even ADHD) is a big part of what's going on. It's not just the parents not trusting the education content - it's often more about the environment at the school preventing education at all, for various reasons. And I don't understand it - we had bulling when I was in school in the 90s, heck I was a "victim", but the school kept it clampt down, and I pretty much got over the minor stuff that still happened. There's plenty of stories about alternative systems like these home school pods and such also not having the same bullying problems either. So what is the issue with public schools? I tend to blame it on the system being rigid, mixed with not enough resources even though we spend so much on the schools.
Anecdote: the lady nextdoor is fucked in the head and couldn’t let her kid have a normal childhood experience until the 7th grade (I think).
The anti woke movement.
Let me present my counter-tale to all the anti-home school comments.
My kid is autistic and the schools are some of the most poorly funded in the country. Despite this the school did an excellent job and had very good staff that did a very good job. But as my child went up in grades the resources available decreased. It was quickly heading for a point where the 1-on-1 time they would need wouldn't be available. Then the pandemic hit. We were forced into online school when the school closed for a bit. The amount of specialist time available dropped to near-zero.
The school wasn't prepared for online school and the sites/curriculum they used were all over the place. We supplemented with our own field trips and additional resources. But they otherwise took to it really well and were still learning.
The next school year our school still didn't have its act together. We found a different online school that actually had good curriculum. They've been going to that ever since and it's gone really well.
BIG CAVEATS: I used to be a public school teacher. My degrees are in that, and I was certified. I work in a different field now, but I still have that background to know adolescent psychology, how to evaluate curriculum, knowledge of what is grade-level appropriate, etc. My partner specialized in language and writing, while I was science, math, and tech. We take great pains to socialize our child with outside activities, and make sure they read and participate in art/creative activities. My partner is stay-at-home with the primary job of seeing to our child's education. I help but assist in my areas of expertise.
TLDR; Home school IS used as a way for a lot of parents to enable hyper-religious or abusive behavior, but that's not universal. In some cases it can be the best solution for the child.
And you provided the evidence that home schooling is not appropriate for 99% of the families out there. How many other families have the education, background, and resources that you bring to the table? Virtually none. And it's only made worse by the fact that there are no standards, no testing required, no checks on the child's welfare.
Agree that child welfare checks should be a thing. Our state does have testing requirements, but no curriculum standards.
To me, all of your arguments just point out faults in the education system. I know you can't change the system all on your own and I think you've made the right decision for your family. I just feel like all the arguments I've read on this post in support of home schooling aren't the best solution for students, they're just workarounds for the deficiencies of our schools.
Former Autistic Child here, now Autistic Adult. My public school years were the absolute worst. I had a 504 Plan and despite that, everyone ignored it except for me being able to leave class 5 minutes early to skip the passing time and get to class early. After looking into college, there was a specific guy I got to talk to for accommodations and everything was MUCH better. Recently dropped out with the hope to go into Aviation Maintenance, though I'm still waiting for approval.
Fingers crossed for you!
Thank you!!
Would you say that a parent’s ability to successfully homeschool is largely impacted by the resources available to that parent from their state and other governmental bodies?
I’m curious because of another comment on a different post from a parent in Florida who said their homeschooling curriculum and resources are really god and well charted/planned out.
I would say it is largely impacted by available resources, but not necessarily limited to government. Some locations have great non-profit organizations dedicated to exactly this sort of thing. I'd say a lot of places have those sorts of resources, but often are hard to find.
For us it was 1) our work schedules weren’t conducive to taking kids to school as there is limited bus service in CO and 2) we both went to the best public schools in our area of NoVA and they could have done better in a lot of ways. Neither of us are fans of the public school system having been products of them.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, homeschooling in the US has become a breeding ground for religious extremism.
How do you do home schooling if your work schedules interfere with the typical school schedule?