this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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What's the consensus on homeschooling from lemmy users?
I've got a sister and a sister in law who both homeschool their 4 children each. Those kids don't know how to read. It makes me pretty sick.
That's... Sad. My kindergartner knows how to read already.
Good if you're actually able to do it properly, but there's a lot of cases where the parents really shouldn't be doing it.
Fine if you're not a lazy, racist idiot who's actually just scared their children might become friends with black kids and otherwise shouldn't have passed sixth grade themselves.
Would be great if home schooling had some laws around not teaching your kids to be christofascist terrorists
Or even just some laws that require you to prove you have a lesson plan at all
Like I posted above, the biggest issue with home schooling. Is it almost always is used to brainwash the children towards extremism.
My daughter was very severely bullied in her middle school and we put her in an online school she does from home, but it's a public school with classes (via videoconference) with actual accredited teachers and the same awful Pierson textbooks everyone else uses anyway because Pierson, unfortunately, runs the program despite it being a public school.
She got the best grades she's ever gotten and gained a ton of self confidence when she was self-harming before.
Not exactly homeschooling as it is usually thought of, but she does do school from home.
Incidentally, this also means I can correct the information in her health class about things like cannabis and can also make sure she understands that her social studies class is often giving her the right wing or corporate viewpoints that are typical in American schools. She knows she still has to answer their way, but at least she knows what they're lying about when I can show her that they're lying.
What sort of stuff do they teach about cannabis in health class that's so badly wrong? I am not an American so I don't really know.
I remember in ours while they talked about the dangers of drugs in some disingenuous ways, they also put a lot of emphasis on the dangers of alcohol and nicotine. Specifically I remember them comparing either alcohol or nicotine to cocaine or cannabis or something and saying that the nicotine was more addictive than the illicit substance.
Cannabis isn't nearly as harmless as people like to think, but that doesn't mean it's as harmful as others would have you believe. It's certainly less physically destructive and somewhat less addictive than something like alcohol which should always be considered a "hard drug".
The biggest lie is that it is a "gateway drug," that using it will end up getting you addicted to heroin or whatever. They also classified it as a unique drug, different from any other illegal substance in the U.S.
I talked about it here: https://lemmy.world/post/15142373
In regard to other substances, they pushed AA, which is not scientific and has not been shown to be effective for most people (although it does work for some) and said absolutely nothing about pharmaceutical treatment for smoking or alcohol cessation.
That's what I remember from the top of my head, but there were other things too.
The gateway phenomenon does exist. It isn't caused by the substance itself but rather by it being illegal. Using it puts you in contact with people who sell or use other illicit substances. Legalisation would fix this issue obviously.
Cannabis is from a unique class of substances (cannabinoids) named after it. This is because it was the first known of its type, and combines stimulant, depressant, and hallucinogenic effects. I don't know about it's legal classification in the USA, but here it's a standard Class B substance.
I agree about AA and NA though. There really shouldn't be any room for such religious nonsense in state policy, or just in general.
Given how difficult it can be for a trained teacher to successfully manage lesson plans and teach one or two subjects, it's not hard to see why homeschooling is a disaster for a lot of kids who wind up being taught by a single parent with minimal to no education credentials.
Best-case scenario I've seen is that the students wind up pretty un-rounded, and wind up excelling in one or two subjects, while neglecting basically anything else. It makes sense from the perspective of the parent as well. That might be the subject you're most familiar with, and therefore can, even unintentionally, give it the most attention. Another aspect is wanting your kid to succeed, and if you see them excelling in a subject and doing poorly in another, there's a tendency to just keep focusing on that since they're doing so well on it, rather than "wasting time" on other subjects they're not excelling in.
Only 2 people I've ever known have managed to be what I'd consider "successful" after homeschooling. Both went to the same engineering school that I did, and did extremely well overall. However, they suffered many of the same issues in terms of over-specialization, which becomes really apparent when you talk with them for an extended period of time. Usually they also tend to be incredibly socially inept, but fortunately for these guys their parents gave them a ton of opportunities for socialization with clubs and social hobbies, so that wasn't as apparent, but still something that a lot of homeschool students miss out on.
Realistically, I think the only way you could feasibly manage a truly quality homeschool education is with both parents having an in-depth education of 2-3 subjects (like 5-6 years minimum), in addition to at least some formal educational training. Then, bringing in home tutors for the subjects they likely won't be able to cover nearly as well to supplement them. Finally, having them enrolled in an absurd amount of sports/clubs/hobbies to make up for the 6 hours of social contact with other kids they're missing out on.
With that being said, it's a fuckton more effort and money than almost anyone is going to actually put into a homeschool education, and 98% of the time it's going to be a stay at home parent with minimal to no credentials buying lesson plans off the internet, brushing up on them the night before, and likely giving lackluster instruction on most subjects.
I mean you follow a testing module to ensure subject matter is satisfactory. After 2nd grade I believe?
It can be great, but a lot of states have literally no standards for how it's done, and most (all?) of the rest have very weak standards. I'd be fine with it if there were real standards requiring parents to educate their kids and not brainwash them into being Nazis.
Washington state has yearly testing standards to ensure education is level with peers. I know a lot of people who's kids are homeschooled here who are constantly exceeding scores of their peers. One parent is a 6th grade teacher in public school, while homeschooling her own kids. But even those without credentials are having high scores. Having a community and peer to peer collaboration helps too.
I'm generally OK with it, except when these kinds of doofuses do it. At best they want children to be indoctrinated to their ideology, at worst they're abusing their children.