Political Memes

I'll disagree, slightly. They can also be:

• starting from flawed premises (aka "The world is a just place" or "a just god exists")
• Inexperienced edgelords
• Arguing in bad faith (or just "I've got mine, so fuck you")

I say this as someone who flirted with libertarianism in my early 20's due mostly to a conservative religious upbringing. I'm not super smart, but I flatter myself to say that I'm above average intelligence and education, and there was still a brief time in my life when libertarianism served like a valid ideology. It took actually reading some objectivist philosophy and simultaneously reexamining and then rejecting my religious background before the flaws became evident.

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.

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

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.

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.