Isreal Easterday brought "a symbol of treason, defiance of the law, and insurrection" to the Capitol before he temporarily blinded two officers with chemical spray, prosecutors said.
They said that Easterday was home-schooled and that “everything he knew was filtered through the lens of his parents” when he went to the Capitol. Easterday, they said, “plainly did not fully understand what the Confederate flag signified” and even Googled “what does the rebel flag represent” on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.
A topic that hits close to home for me as I and my 3 siblings were homeschooled until college. 3 out of 4 of us turned into bleeding-heart libtards. All are doing well now.
Just to flip things around a bit, I perceive public schools who often look like prisons in my area and whose 1:15-25 teacher-student ratio and where peer-pressure and blind-leading-the-blind rules tends to be a bit abusive in itself. To that end, I’m willing to bed by proportionality there are less “school shooters” or suicides produced from homeschooling than there are from public school.
But ultimately I think it comes down to pointing the finger at the wrong thing; you see, it’s not homeschooling, it’s religious extremism. Partition out secular homeschooling and there’s quite a difference. Even that said, my mom placed such a high importance on empathy and critical-thinking that my entire family reasoned ourselves out of the religious indoctrination bubble and even my parents flipped from right to left.
And if academics are of concern, it should be noted that homeschooled tend to either meet or out-pace the median publicly-schooled student.
Confirmation bias is also at play, here. Since most people can’t relate to homeschooling and only know of public school, it’s easy to point to it as a problem — similarly to how out of touch parents point to violent video-games. The bad apples are thus often highlighted in news articles, but nobody ever points to the fact that 9/10 of the other Jan 6’ers were most assuredly public schooled.
My daughter is in online school, which is like homeschooling, except it’s an actual accredited state school with real teachers giving live video lessons during the day, although I still have to stay home with her to help her with assignments and keep her on track. She is not religious, we are anything but right-wing. We took her out of school because she’s a unique sort of kid and those sorts of kids get bullied. She was so severely bullied that even the bullied kids bullied her. She was having thoughts of self-harm.
Now she has much more self-esteem, her grades are better than they have ever been, and she actually has more friends now than she did when she was in public school. We even have a teen homeschool/online school social group that meets once or twice a week.
There are still bad days, but overall, she’s doing really well and this has been a life-changer for her.
I wouldn’t recommend it for every kid out there, but if I had the option when I was her age, I would have jumped at the chance.
This is similar to how my mom began homeschooling. My oldest sister was being bullied at school and my mom took her out for her own safety. At the time we were religious, but not particularly fundamentalist.
With internet resources, libraries, and these state-sponsored cyber-schooling programs, you can find the niche that is appropriate for your kid and do it in a way that doesn’t involve right-wing nut job indoctrination as you prove. If people want to have some sort of oversight to ensure we don’t churn out Duggars or Turpin kids, then I’m okay with that so long as there is flexibility in the curriculum to specialize to your child’s needs & interests.
You make a lot of blanket statements without having any actual data to back any of it up. Home schooling CAN be a very positive experience, but it can also be a dumpster fire with little or no oversight. The truth is that we have very little data about the academic performance or even welfare of home-schooled children in the US because in many states they aren’t required to meet even basic curriculum or assessment goals. The only information we do have is largely coming from providers of home schooling curriculums who are motivated to show positive outcomes.
I’m glad it worked out well for you, but if you haven’t watched the Shiny Happy People documentary series about the Duggar family and the IBLP (who have millions of families following their curriculum), you ought to check it out.
Completely fair to be skeptical, but I’d like to point out a couple of things:
Generally-speaking and in this very thread, criticism of homeschooling is nothing but blanket-statements without any data to back claims up. I’d only ask that we don’t resign ourselves to double-standards.
If you’re concerned about any claims I made or want specific data, I’m happy to look up the source (frankly just lazy in the moment). As with most topics, the problem isn’t data, but preconceived ideas / prejudice blinding people from wanting to acknowledge said data.
Yes, that’s the nature of wide variety of things, including Public Schooling itself, ironically! Public school can be a dumpster fire for many kids (side-note, my wife was an extroverted straight-A’s Honors, AP, extracurricular student in high school and has come to a similar conclusion).
Yes, Duggars suck. Yes, Turpin family suck. But remind me how many school shooters there have been and what was the origin of their education, again?
I have no problem with there being oversight. In the state I grew up I still had to do testing and most importantly be evaluated by a certified teacher at the end of the school year just to track progress. There was of course some wiggle-room to specialize one’s education according to their environment / kid’s needs, which is where this excels.
Naturally I have a unique perspective than most because being in the deep minority of those homeschooled, I’m also privy to knowing far more homeschoolers personally than the average publicly-schooled kid. At the same time, being surrounded by the majority who’ve been public-schooled has allowed me to compare-and-contrast the two groups. Given differences in maturity, confidence in my own capacity to set my child up for success (not to mention it being easier than ever with the internet & libraries), the chaos of public school and what is essentially a system set up to let the blind lead the blind and practically encourages bullying… I’m choosing to homeschool my kids as well — keeping religious faith out of it, of course.
The Columbine shooters were publicly-schooled.
The Oxford school shooter was publicly-schooled;
The Sandy Hook shooter was publicly-schooled until 16. Etc.
… So why are comment threads in those instances never espousing, “public school is child abuse!”?
And therein lies the double-standard. So if we peel it back, it’s lack understanding of the topic, and a matter of personal self-esteem being attacked because that would suggest either they as students or parents didn’t make the right decision, and nobody likes criticism.
Is homeschooling for everybody? No. But is public schooling? Absolutely not.
You’re right, it’s more nuanced and I jumped on the majority who (I perceive) conduct home schooling because they’re religious nuts. Glad you all turned out all right. Find some further left spaces. I bet you’ll want to push even further.
Home-schooling is abuse.
That seems like a pretty big omission. Hell, I’m from the South and I had a better idea of it in middle school.
A topic that hits close to home for me as I and my 3 siblings were homeschooled until college. 3 out of 4 of us turned into bleeding-heart libtards. All are doing well now.
Just to flip things around a bit, I perceive public schools who often look like prisons in my area and whose 1:15-25 teacher-student ratio and where peer-pressure and blind-leading-the-blind rules tends to be a bit abusive in itself. To that end, I’m willing to bed by proportionality there are less “school shooters” or suicides produced from homeschooling than there are from public school.
But ultimately I think it comes down to pointing the finger at the wrong thing; you see, it’s not homeschooling, it’s religious extremism. Partition out secular homeschooling and there’s quite a difference. Even that said, my mom placed such a high importance on empathy and critical-thinking that my entire family reasoned ourselves out of the religious indoctrination bubble and even my parents flipped from right to left.
And if academics are of concern, it should be noted that homeschooled tend to either meet or out-pace the median publicly-schooled student.
Confirmation bias is also at play, here. Since most people can’t relate to homeschooling and only know of public school, it’s easy to point to it as a problem — similarly to how out of touch parents point to violent video-games. The bad apples are thus often highlighted in news articles, but nobody ever points to the fact that 9/10 of the other Jan 6’ers were most assuredly public schooled.
My daughter is in online school, which is like homeschooling, except it’s an actual accredited state school with real teachers giving live video lessons during the day, although I still have to stay home with her to help her with assignments and keep her on track. She is not religious, we are anything but right-wing. We took her out of school because she’s a unique sort of kid and those sorts of kids get bullied. She was so severely bullied that even the bullied kids bullied her. She was having thoughts of self-harm.
Now she has much more self-esteem, her grades are better than they have ever been, and she actually has more friends now than she did when she was in public school. We even have a teen homeschool/online school social group that meets once or twice a week.
There are still bad days, but overall, she’s doing really well and this has been a life-changer for her.
I wouldn’t recommend it for every kid out there, but if I had the option when I was her age, I would have jumped at the chance.
This is similar to how my mom began homeschooling. My oldest sister was being bullied at school and my mom took her out for her own safety. At the time we were religious, but not particularly fundamentalist.
With internet resources, libraries, and these state-sponsored cyber-schooling programs, you can find the niche that is appropriate for your kid and do it in a way that doesn’t involve right-wing nut job indoctrination as you prove. If people want to have some sort of oversight to ensure we don’t churn out Duggars or Turpin kids, then I’m okay with that so long as there is flexibility in the curriculum to specialize to your child’s needs & interests.
You make a lot of blanket statements without having any actual data to back any of it up. Home schooling CAN be a very positive experience, but it can also be a dumpster fire with little or no oversight. The truth is that we have very little data about the academic performance or even welfare of home-schooled children in the US because in many states they aren’t required to meet even basic curriculum or assessment goals. The only information we do have is largely coming from providers of home schooling curriculums who are motivated to show positive outcomes.
I’m glad it worked out well for you, but if you haven’t watched the Shiny Happy People documentary series about the Duggar family and the IBLP (who have millions of families following their curriculum), you ought to check it out.
Completely fair to be skeptical, but I’d like to point out a couple of things:
Generally-speaking and in this very thread, criticism of homeschooling is nothing but blanket-statements without any data to back claims up. I’d only ask that we don’t resign ourselves to double-standards.
If you’re concerned about any claims I made or want specific data, I’m happy to look up the source (frankly just lazy in the moment). As with most topics, the problem isn’t data, but preconceived ideas / prejudice blinding people from wanting to acknowledge said data.
Yes, that’s the nature of wide variety of things, including Public Schooling itself, ironically! Public school can be a dumpster fire for many kids (side-note, my wife was an extroverted straight-A’s Honors, AP, extracurricular student in high school and has come to a similar conclusion).
Yes, Duggars suck. Yes, Turpin family suck. But remind me how many school shooters there have been and what was the origin of their education, again?
I have no problem with there being oversight. In the state I grew up I still had to do testing and most importantly be evaluated by a certified teacher at the end of the school year just to track progress. There was of course some wiggle-room to specialize one’s education according to their environment / kid’s needs, which is where this excels.
Naturally I have a unique perspective than most because being in the deep minority of those homeschooled, I’m also privy to knowing far more homeschoolers personally than the average publicly-schooled kid. At the same time, being surrounded by the majority who’ve been public-schooled has allowed me to compare-and-contrast the two groups. Given differences in maturity, confidence in my own capacity to set my child up for success (not to mention it being easier than ever with the internet & libraries), the chaos of public school and what is essentially a system set up to let the blind lead the blind and practically encourages bullying… I’m choosing to homeschool my kids as well — keeping religious faith out of it, of course.
The Columbine shooters were publicly-schooled.
The Oxford school shooter was publicly-schooled;
The Sandy Hook shooter was publicly-schooled until 16. Etc.
… So why are comment threads in those instances never espousing, “public school is child abuse!”?
And therein lies the double-standard. So if we peel it back, it’s lack understanding of the topic, and a matter of personal self-esteem being attacked because that would suggest either they as students or parents didn’t make the right decision, and nobody likes criticism.
Is homeschooling for everybody? No. But is public schooling? Absolutely not.
You’re right, it’s more nuanced and I jumped on the majority who (I perceive) conduct home schooling because they’re religious nuts. Glad you all turned out all right. Find some further left spaces. I bet you’ll want to push even further.