General Education Thread

That still doesn't make it the minority.

Generally, the majority is representative of the group. That was what I meant, just some awkward wording about a statistics thing. It's not the majority, though. Not any more so than Evangelicals are a majority of all Christians or sexual harassers are a majority of all... men. Let's cast a wide net there, I actually don't know if that applies to "male bosses".

Worth noting that the bans on homeschooling in countries like Germany are precisely to prevent horror stories like carbon-mantis' from happening.

Ok, so you don't know how statistics work.

The majority is the largest subset in a group of other subsets.

The majority of homeschool advocates are in fact evangelical anti-intellectuals.

Weren't you trying to tell us that homeschooling didn't lead to ignorance and bad education?

I know very well how statistics work. That was in reference to "they don't represent all homeschoolers" and it was meant to explain the awkward wording there. Crazy evangelicals do not, in fact, consist of the majority of homeschoolers. You are wrong on that.

Also, don't call me stupid.

edited 23rd Mar '18 6:29:26 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

Ok then. Explain to me how I am wrong?

I have yet to see a single secular group advocate homeschooling. Homeschooling is very much a fundamentalist thing.

And stories like carbon's are quite common and are indicative of te vast majority of those who homeschool.

You tell me I am wrong but neglect to explain how.

I called you ignorant. Everything you have said up to this point has indicated that to me and shows how flawed your preferred system of education is.

edited 23rd Mar '18 6:33:20 AM by PhilosopherStones

A quick Google search reveals many websites dedicated to secular homeschooling.

Here's just one.

I suspected as much. Yeah those groups are fairly small and are nothing compared to the evangelical ones.

Afterall what reason would the majority of secular people have to keep their children out of public school? The practice is much more prevalent and promoted in religious ones.

Either way you slice it, no matter what group you look at homeschooling just isn't justifiable on any level. It's the parents putting their own ego above the well-being of their child and forcing their beliefs down their throat, regardless of what those beliefs are.

It's a sick, selfish and abusive practice that should be banned.

edited 23rd Mar '18 6:59:14 AM by PhilosopherStones

Medic your own source from several pages back says that 64% of homeschoolers do it due to “a desire to provide religious instruction” or if we want to unpack that, because they’re bug nut crazy evangelicals who want to get their kid away from that satanic science.

That’s almost two thirds, two thirds of homeschoolers are doing it for bad reasons and should be stopped. Luckily you (and by the sound of it your local homeschooling community) fall into the one third of people doing it for others reasons, but that’s still a minority.

A desire for a nontradditonal approach to education (which will include some evangelicals, Bible only education is nontraditonal after all) only accounts for 44%.

As for child lead learning, if responsibility is taught and children are still lead by the teacher it can work, we let kids pick their GCS Es and A levels, it’s that but a bit earlier. Thing is you need small (as in under 6 people) class sizes like my school had to pull it off, you also need to make room for non-classroom learning. Likwise when it comes to required tests and exams you still have to teach what’s needed for them, which is a lot easier when the kid understands that that’s why they have to learn this boring shit and are onboard with it.

edited 23rd Mar '18 7:13:16 AM by Silasw

Okay, you're not going to be reasonable.

Good timing! I was just about to bring that up. I don't think all 64% of those who do it for religious reasons are part of those crazy evangelicals. I'd say easily a majority of those are evangelicals, but that category can cover a wide range of people, such as people of other religions, sane Christians, or people who want to raise their kids away from religion entirely. I still think that evangelicals are a minority among homeschoolers, even if they aren't a vast minority.

Even if we are to assume that literally every one of those 64% is a psycho cult evangelical, there's still the 36% who aren't. There are about 2.5 million children who are homeschooled in the United States, that's 9 hundred thousand good people. This is also all assuming that homeschooling's mainstream popularity growing over time hasn't changed the religious percentage.

edited 23rd Mar '18 7:40:05 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

That's 2.5 million too many.

You don't seem to understand. There is no reasoning with these people. They are wrong and they don't know it. And that makes them dangerous.

Ultimately the reason why they decide to take their child's education into their own incapable hands is irrelevant. It's the act itself that is wrong.

There’s no reasoning with the nutball evangelicals, but for the reasonable 34%, they are going to include of people who would stop homeschooling if their district was funded reasonably, people with special needs kids, rich people who can afford tutors and such, people who are homeschooling temporarily as they try and get their kid into a good school, people who just believe in a different educational approach and people who have kids with mental health problems that the traditional system is making worse.

All of them can be reasoned with and subject to proper regulation and child protection law.

The same as not every homeschool is great like Medic’s, temporary like my friend’s it’s not horrific and criminal like yours.

Part of your argument seems rooted in the idea that I am a moron. This is false. Forgive my boasting, but it actually serves to prove a point here. When I entered high school, I scored at or above grade level in all subjects. I was top Honor Roll in high school, and I received multiple awards for outstanding performance. My current GPA in Scottsdale Community College is 3.684. I am being offered a chance to join Phi Theta Kappa. Finally, for what it's worth (IMO not everything but not nothing, either), my IQ is 142, making me just barely above the bare minimum to be classified as a genius. I am NOT stupid. I can say that with confidence.

Medic?

edited 23rd Mar '18 7:59:32 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

Those are all justifiable, save for people who believe in "different education" whatever that means.

Honestly all of those problems can be solved with better public schooling. Homeschooling is not gonna remedy that. They are inherently anti-education and would be perfectly content seeing the system in shambles. Because it would prove them 'right'.

edited 23rd Mar '18 8:03:27 AM by PhilosopherStones

Okay, so:

1. We're starting with ~3.5% of the children in the USA.
2. Removing a child from the normal educational system for religious reasons can and should be taken as deliberately limiting what they can learn; religious education on top of a full education doesn't require removal from the system.
3. Therefore we only have to concern ourselves with 1/3 of homeschooling as a valid idea.
4. Out of that ~33% of homeschooling, it isn't excessive to assume that 1/2 is subpar and should be in the normal educational system.
5. We've already agreed that further regulation is required—specifically to curb the 84% of cases currently outlined.
6. To defend homeschooling as a common practise and not something used in exceptional cases, you need to justify an entirely separate branch of inspections and regulations, along with the bureaucracy to support this and keep it level with normal education, rather than simply putting more funding to improve the main school system.
7. Finally, though the absolute number is still ~450k, this is just 16% of 3.5% of children—about 0.6% rounding up. This is a tiny proportion with no consistent needs to address—it's frankly absurd to suggest that it's fair to the remaining 99.4% that this small group deserves special funding for what's a choice.

We’re actually comparing IQ scores guys... like this isn’t a joke? We’re genuinely playing a game of who is smarter?

Also I apparently can’t tell an a from a c, so much for my IQ score.

By different educational approach I mean thing like play-learning, non-classroom learning, children’s democracy and child-lead learning, not batshit excuses. They’d still be subject to inspections and tests the same as the normal system.

The current inspection system can be expanded to cover them, let ofsted inspect homeschools.

edited 23rd Mar '18 8:06:36 AM by Silasw

Hey, they started with the personal attacks questioning my intelligence. I think I'm justified in refuting that assumption.

Nobody has made any personal attacks on you, despite your repeated attempts to bait people into doing so.

My intelligence and knowledge have been attacked at least thrice now, and there's currently someone ranting about how homeschooling is pure evil and disgusting in a clear attempt to bait me into responding.

I did call you ignorant, and while I am sorry if that upset you I still stand by it. I cannot conceive of anybody advocating for homeschooling as being "not ignorant".

Ignorant does not mean stupid. Just because the first palentologists thought that the dinosaurs were more lizard like than bird like does not make them stupid in hindsight.

Also I am quite skeptical about IQ and I honestly do not care how "high your number is". I am merely criticizing the ideas you are presenting here.

I would be okay with homeschooling in theory under two basic premises:

1) That the person doing the homeschooling has a teacher's education from an accredited institution proving they actually know how to teach.

2) That a relevant local authority (probably city or county-based in the US) can set up a biannual test to see if the student's learning is within the same parameters as students their own age. I.e checking if they're actually learning what they're supposed to be learning.

Under those two criteria, I could see homeschooling being an option. A highly discouraged option, but an option.

And speaking as someone who's done some research in the nebulously-defined field of 'intelligence,' IQ testing is absolute bollocks.

edited 23rd Mar '18 8:14:27 AM by math792d

At the very minimum I'd personally like to see the ones administering the teaching take a high school equivalency exam. Even if they have a degree, it may have been acquired 30+ years ago and not everyone retains what they learned that far back.

Couple that with more rigorous documentation. I'm basing this off my own experiences, admittedly, and there's plenty of holes there. It's a little difficult to organize proper oversight. Something like grades and attendance can easily be faked, as it was in my case and most of the others involved in the community I grew up in.

It's not like IQ is meaningless. It's certainly not the end-all be-all, and the test itself is rather biased, but it's still an okay method of measuring intelligence. Good for getting into the general ballpark. I honestly don't see what the need is for such vile hatred. Homeschooling works fine, I'm living proof of that. I'm not the best at explaining what the benefits are, but I tried.

Here's an article that explains it better than me.

Here's another.

Again, I'm all for more regulations to stop bad people.

edited 23rd Mar '18 8:20:20 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

No, IQ testing is a test primarily oriented towards trying to figure out how well a child is going to learn in a school environment that has often shown itself to be racist, disadvantaging those with a more modest economic background, and favoring spatial memory, a small component of overall cognition.

It's bunk.