What has happened to homework?

[thatsbaseball]

I was taught by nuns through my first 8 grades of school. I don't remember their exact techniques of teaching math but I do remember their idea of a "teachable moment" was when you made a dumb mistake they would whack you in the back of the head with an 8oz yard stick. Don't think this would be acceptable now but it was very effective back then.

 

[00Dawg]

Nah. That was more a comment on...

my daughter specifically and tweens in general. She can call it back up whenever she wants, which is usually the test after a bad grade or two when her parents have implemented some form of punishment. Her grades have looked like a roller coaster for several years as we've alternated trying to let her fly solo and then nudging her back on course before whatever class it was (in this case, math) dropped below a B.
She's a freshman now, so we're hammering home that the ability to choose her college and her future now depends on her, and her actions starting as of about a week ago....wish us luck.

 

[00Dawg]

I watched a report on this a while back.

It stated one of reasons they're successful at math is that they have more one-syllable words for numbers than we do, including at least into the teens (I don't remember how high). That literally lets their brain process numbers faster.

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

When you make wholesale changes to a learning environment you've got to know your demographic. But I've also heard the performance assessment of children who did have internet and home computers was disappointing as well. We knew children are easily distracted and it played out in the remote learning environment. Not being critical bc I don't have a good answer for it all, but that's what I'm hearing.

 

[patdog]

Not surprising at all. We've got a generation of kids that essentially missed a full year of school.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

Until they get to college or the real world and have interact with people outside the home. School prepares for you a lot more than just the books,

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

That's what I'm saying. We were taught to memorize rather than analyze. The new math is set up to teach analyzing a problem and finding a solution. In my line of work, I see too many graduates and old farts for that matter that can't analyze a problem and find a solution for ****. I see too many that have to have an SOP step by step guide to baby sit and then they have to memorize the steps. If you change something up and they hit a snag they can't figure it out, I like that they are changing things up.

 

[CochiseCowbell]

I understand the concept of this, for in the real world we mental math in our own different ways all the time and those have "built in" double checks. I know I didn't word that very well. In your above example, in my head I would do 12X3 then result X 10, or you know just add a zero.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Until they get to college or the real world and have interact with people outside the home. School prepares for you a lot more than just the books,

1997 talking point. Been totally debunked.

 

[CochiseCowbell]

I’m a teacher. A lot of what I’ve seen in education is people just trying to re-invent the wheel.

Higher education does this as well: Publish or Perish. Freshman Shakespeare class demanded that I buy the newest edition of the Riverside Shakespeare. The man hadn't written anything in 350 years. I used my mother's 30 year old 1970 edition and did just fine.

STEM is a different animal though, advancements in knowledge actually occur.

 

[johnson86-1]

I'm feeling your pain. Got a sophomore in high school and last year I was trying to help her in algebra 1. This is **** I haven't seen in over 30 years. I'm having to go back and teach myself all over again. I figure it out and go to explain it and she stops me and says that's not how the teacher works them. I look at her notes and I have no 17ing idea what I'm looking at. Could be hieroglyphics from an alien landing craft for all I know. She tells me the teacher will count off if she doesn't work them like she does. I tell her I can tell you how to work the problem but not like whatever ET scribble she has in her notebook. It seems like the textbook writers try to make themselves stay relevant by inventing new more complicated ways to work problems than the old tried and true methods that were used for decades. All this new common core BS can go 17 itself in right in the ***.

The problem is a lot of educators are morons and a lot of the ones that aren't are trapped in the system. The way it was explained to me by someone in education that I would trust his insight is that academics studying smart people recognized that they often didn't do things the same way as less intelligent people. So good readers don't use phonics, they use whole word recognition. So the academics ignore the fact that good readers started off using phonics and then because they read a lot, no longer needed to rely on it because they recognize all the words. So they screwed up reading instruction because they weren't smart enough to think about the fact that good readers might have more ability to begin with than average or poor readers and also that how they read now may not tell them the way they learned to read or what the best way to learn is. Then even smart teachers that knew it was stupid were still forced to abandon phonics because they had to follow the curriculum.

It's similar in Math. They see that people that are really good at math think about problems in different ways and often don't use the ways they were taught. So they ignore all the natural ability involved, and then also ignore the fact that even if they look at problems different ways now, they may have started off looking at them the straightforward way, so they try to skip to teaching regular students to do problems like smarter, more experienced students do problems.

Then you compound that problem that having not very bright teachers miss the whole point of trying to teach students to look at problems in multiple, different ways, and instead they still make the students do math problems in a particular way, as long as it's not the traditional way. So you still end up with teaching straight up mechanical problem solving (which is not necessarily a problem), except it's a just a less efficient mechanical problem solving method.

 

[PooPopsBaldHead]

I have a soon to be 3rd grader that did the last 3 months of Kindergarten and all of 1st grade remotely. He just finished 2nd grade and missed 15+ days of school this past year because of various teacher shortages due to Covid and flu outbreaks at his school.

Luckily he's a good kid and did very well with remote learning. Many of his classmates struggled understandably. I could just leave him at the computer for hours and he'd behave. But his age group is way behind. Especially in math. He was one of only 4-5 kids that made it to subtraction this year in his class.

When we learned this, we signed both him and his 4 year old brother up for Kumon. He's now doing 20-30 minutes of math every day, 365 days a year. Currently it's about 160 simple math problems per worksheet and he does 1 a day 5 days a week and 2 on the other days . So far this month that's 3840 simple addition and subtraction problems and he's missed 15 or so. Rote learning on steroids.

Schools can teach him concepts, but we know that rote learning will be critical down the road when taking timed aptitude tests required for college and/or graduate school admissions. By doing 30 minutes a day of math every day, he will have more than double the math experience of kids that just go to school and do the assigned work by the time they get into ACT/SAT testing. That should be helpful.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

1997 talking point. Been totally debunked.

By whom? The almighty and knowing goat?

 

[johnson86-1]

Until they get to college or the real world and have interact with people outside the home. School prepares for you a lot more than just the books,

This is really overblown. Homeschooled kids probably are (or maybe just were) weirder on average just because it takes a little weirdness generally to go your own way (so their parents were probably weirder on average), but I hear the same comments about private school versus public school and it's just idiotic. I deal with people with professional degrees and sometimes PhDs to high school dropouts and ex felons, and there's pretty much no difference that I can tell between public school and private school as far as working with and managing other people. The only person I know of off hand that was homeschooled was poor at managing people and couldn't relate to people, but was still smart enough to convince other people to keep promoting him. And he has basically the same personality of a colleague that went to public school and public college who had the same trajectory. Both of them are poor managers with employees/reports that hate them and hate working for them, but they're smart enough they've managed to get buy. I doubt going to public school would really changed the personality of the home schooled one or taught him to relate to people and I doubt the public school graduate would be any worse if he had been home schooled. It may make a difference on the margins, but it's just not that big of a deal.

 

[statedawg2004]

View attachment 24912
Google Bloom's taxonomy. 3+4=7 is the recall. 2n+1=7 is simply analyze. That's all "common core" is...moving kids up the pyramid of Bloom.

 

[johnson86-1]

That's what I'm saying. We were taught to memorize rather than analyze. The new math is set up to teach analyzing a problem and finding a solution. In my line of work, I see too many graduates and old farts for that matter that can't analyze a problem and find a solution for ****. I see too many that have to have an SOP step by step guide to baby sit and then they have to memorize the steps. If you change something up and they hit a snag they can't figure it out, I like that they are changing things up.

That's (mostly) not because of the way they were taught. And it's certainly not because they learned how to do multiplication or long division. It's because most people are not going to be problem solvers as far as math goes. It's great to try to teach students to look at things different ways and understand math more conceptually, but I'm not sure doing that without at least teaching them the basic tools is a good idea.

 

[VegasDawg13]

This is really overblown. Homeschooled kids probably are (or maybe just were) weirder on average just because it takes a little weirdness generally to go your own way (so their parents were probably weirder on average), but I hear the same comments about private school versus public school and it's just idiotic. I deal with people with professional degrees and sometimes PhDs to high school dropouts and ex felons, and there's pretty much no difference that I can tell between public school and private school as far as working with and managing other people. The only person I know of off hand that was homeschooled was poor at managing people and couldn't relate to people, but was still smart enough to convince other people to keep promoting him. And he has basically the same personality of a colleague that went to public school and public college who had the same trajectory. Both of them are poor managers with employees/reports that hate them and hate working for them, but they're smart enough they've managed to get buy. I doubt going to public school would really changed the personality of the home schooled one or taught him to relate to people and I doubt the public school graduate would be any worse if he had been home schooled. It may make a difference on the margins, but it's just not that big of a deal.

I don't understand how you think your response disproves trojan's point? If anything, it supports it.

He said that going to school helps you learn how to interact with people, and you said that the only homeschooled person you personally know is poor at relating to others.

 

[johnson86-1]

I've heard a handful of teachers say the remote learning really put some students behind the curve. It was a well intentioned idea that didn't work.

It wasn't a well intentioned idea. Maybe for the spring of 2020 before we realized how little impact there was to students. Every school that wasn't in person by fall of 2020 was shutdown because it was in the self interest of certain people to stay shut down. They may have suckered some people into thinking it was a good idea, but the driving force behind it were ill intentioned.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

If they are in the Madison County School District they get learn that math method until 5th grade and then switch to "normal" math in 6th grade. Our educational system has some issues. Unfortunately, I'm convinced that a lot of them come from three areas: 1) Problems are inherent when you have to instruct in one particular way to educate the masses, as everyone doesn't learn in the same way or pace and 2) Too many administrators just trying boneheaded crap that doesn't translate to the classroom. 3) Teaching to pass a test, not necessarily develop critical thinking skills (this fits broadly into issue 1) but is substantial enough for a call out)

 

[horshack.sixpack]

I'm convinced that this basic math knowledge, PLUS reading comprehension is the foundation for doing well on standardized tests. I've seen too many people who don't read/comprehend well/quickly struggle to get through an entire standardized test because they spend so much time just reading the question. Meanwhile, someone who is a reader gets done and has time to go back through it a second time. Being a reader is a game changer.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

Actually it's really not. My wife works in higher education in counseling and advising college students from undergrad and post grad. Has degrees in psychology. She always tells me the homeschool kids almost always have a hard time adjusting to college especially at larger schools. It's more rare when they don't and it's usually because they were involved in sports and the parents went out of their way to socialize them heavy in social activities. We discussed this when we talked about sending our own kids to school or to homeschool.

 

[Pilgrimdawg]

I know a lot of career teachers, several in my wife’s family included from elementary school level to a couple of College professors with PHD’s. A very few are knowledgeable, well rounded individuals but the vast majority are clueless about the real world outside of their world in academia. I am not a teacher, never wanted to be a teacher, and could not tolerate the crap they put up with from both students and parents. However, how are teachers with absolutely no idea on how the real world works supposed to teach our children how to be successful in the real world. The ones that I know mostly just whine and complain about pretty much everything. No sense of urgency, no idea on how to manage people, a department, or business. No idea about what’s required to fight offshore competition every single day. Terrible planning and communication skills. I am retired now but I would estimate that less than 20 percent of the career teachers I have known would have lasted 2 weeks in my world of sales and marketing for U.S. manufacturing operations. I had a brother in law (deceased now) that was the dean of students for a small Mississippi University. Nice guy, but totally clueless about the real world. Again, I do know some good ones, and I wouldn’t want their job, but I think a lot of teachers end up in their profession because they weren’t going to be able to handle the real world. I have no confidence that today’s teachers have any chance of preparing our children or now grandchildren to be successful in the business world. Sorry if this offends anyone but this is just my experience with the vast majority.

 

[mstateglfr]

The replies from Trojandawg and Hotmop are on point. We want the next generation of people to understand problem-solving, not just rote memorization. Your son will acquire the 4+3 = 7 into rote memory, but he will also understand that doubling a number means to multiply it by two. That's an introduction to multiplication. You could take it further into 2x+1, where you're building a basis for algebra.

Your son is lucky to have a dad who participates in his education. He already has a leg up.

^ currently this has 1 upvote and 2 downvotes.

We have to close the math achievement gap and this is the only way to do that. It's designed to frustrate good students who excel at math, make them completely uninterested in learning this horseshit innovation thus lowering their grades to eliminate achievement gaps. Parents of formerly successful students will likewise become completely frustrated, tell their kids what's the point of studying and working hard anymore, then quit their jobs and give up on life. Equity achieved.

^ currently this has 2 upvotes and 1 downvote.




The post that reiterates why math has changed and compliments the OP on their involvement in education at home has 1 upvote and 2 downvotes.
The post that rambles off some sarcastic claim that we want to lower the bar to close the achievement gap has 2 upvotes and 1 downvote.



Felt that was worth pointing out for perspective. A lot in our society needs to change.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

This is why adjunct instructors and professors with real jobs is important to have in a college department

 

[Smoked Toag]

Actually it's really not. My wife works in higher education in counseling and advising college students from undergrad and post grad. Has degrees in psychology. She always tells me the homeschool kids almost always have a hard time adjusting to college especially at larger schools. It's more rare when they don't and it's usually because they were involved in sports and the parents went out of their way to socialize them heavy in social activities. We discussed this when we talked about sending our own kids to school or to homeschool.

This was your original comment:

School prepares for you a lot more than just the books,

"School" itself doesn't prepare you. Everyone needs socialization. I would counter with the idea that most modern homeschooled kids are MORE socialized than their public school peers.

If you seriously think homeschooled kids aren't getting socialization in this day and age, you truly are stuck in 1997.

 

[Go Budaw]

This is really overblown. Homeschooled kids probably are (or maybe just were) weirder on average just because it takes a little weirdness generally to go your own way (so their parents were probably weirder on average), but I hear the same comments about private school versus public school and it's just idiotic. I deal with people with professional degrees and sometimes PhDs to high school dropouts and ex felons, and there's pretty much no difference that I can tell between public school and private school as far as working with and managing other people. The only person I know of off hand that was homeschooled was poor at managing people and couldn't relate to people, but was still smart enough to convince other people to keep promoting him. And he has basically the same personality of a colleague that went to public school and public college who had the same trajectory. Both of them are poor managers with employees/reports that hate them and hate working for them, but they're smart enough they've managed to get buy. I doubt going to public school would really changed the personality of the home schooled one or taught him to relate to people and I doubt the public school graduate would be any worse if he had been home schooled. It may make a difference on the margins, but it's just not that big of a deal.

With all due respect, you are looking at the finished product of those employees without consideration of how they got there. Nobody said home schooled kids or private school kids can’t adjust - eventually - to the real world as well as public school kids. But if that adjustment is delayed to a later in life period than it would normally happen, it can be both socially and economically detrimental to their lives. Talking about lost early career income opportunities, poor job satisfaction, early adulthood relationship / marital issues, and other struggles here.

Ultimately, its less about the schooling method in particular than it is about general exposure to people from different backgrounds and interests. EVERY child needs to learn, at the earliest age possible, how to interact with other kids who are not from their same neighborhood, church, rec sports league, etc. That’s not even remotely up for debate. The simplest and most straightforward way for this to happen is by enrolling the child in a public school, but it isn’t the only way. External activities like Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts, volunteer opportunities, early life employment / summer jobs are other ways.

The biggest problem is too many parents who go the home school route do so out of a larger agenda of insulating / protecting their children, and controlling all their relationships. That always does way more harm than good. We’ve all seen it, especially in the south. Kids not allowed to hang out with or date other kids from outside the same church (or church in general), overly strict curfews and micromanaging of social life and activities, and so forth. Homeschooling and private schooling, when done for the right reasons and within the proper scope of a child’s development, are both very good things. But they aren’t always done for the right reasons.

 

[johnson86-1]

I don't understand how you think your response disproves trojan's point? If anything, it supports it.

He said that going to school helps you learn how to interact with people, and you said that the only person you personally know is poor at relating to others.

My point is that people attribute that to home schooling without basis. He has the exact same personality as the person I referenced that went to public school. If home schooling caused his personality, what is the explanation of the guy that went to public school?

And I didn't say that's the only person I know that's home schooled. I said he's the only person I know of off hand. And the only reason I know he was home schooled is that people talk about it because he is a terrible manager. There are other people that are home schooled that I have no clue that they were home schooled, just like I generally don't know whether somebody went to public or private high school unless I develop some sort of relationship with them. They only point it out if the person fits their stereotype and ignore the ones that don't.

 

[mstateglfr]

Smells like jealousy to me. Stats say the homeschool kids are better prepared in most every way (except maybe criminal activity).

Thru the years I have worked with so many public school, private school, and homeschool kids that I am confident there is no one singular best way to educate. With that said, I have not found homeschool kids to be better prepared in most every way. Many who I have worked with that are homeschooled are doing so due to learning/behavior issues and the 1on1 is best for their needs.
The one thing the homeschooled kids do tend to have is a strong support system that will do the work needed to make sure the kid has a path to college/move forward.

For all types of education, those with support and involvement at home are overall more prepared- its as simple as that.

 

[VegasDawg13]

If home schooling caused his personality, what is the explanation of the guy that went to public school?

I don't think anyone thinks that homeschooling causes poor interaction with others in 100% of cases, nor does anyone think every single public schooler is good at interacting with others. If that was your point, you're arguing with a strawman.

And I didn't say that's the only person I know that's home schooled. I said he's the only person I know of off hand.

Holy semantics, Batman!

 

[mstateglfr]

The ones that it really hurt were low income household kids that really didn’t have access to things to help them or maybe even a computer.

True. And a couple ways large districts across the country are combating this are 1- no homework and 2- connectivity at home.
- If you dont give homework then there is no connectivity disadvantage.
- 1to1 device policies are important to learning, especially 6th grade and older. Allowing them to be taken home is even more critical. The district providing connectivity for those who need it, thru hotspots or LTE devices then removes the connectivity disadvantage. ECF(Emergency Connectivity Funding) money is being sent out across the country in waves right now to help offset the massive costs. Some districts are spending their funding requests wisely while others spend it on what are questionably beneficial programs.

 

[Chris Mannix]

As a teacher, coach, and principal for many years, more than I care to count at this point, I will agree with most of what is being said in this thread. There are bad teachers out there. Teachers that are not as efficient or proficient in their areas of study as they should be. IMO there are a plethora reasons with teacher pay and the current debate over how politics should intervene into classrooms being the main two reasons driving quality educators out of classrooms. You know you always hear I want my child to have the best education possible, but we do not want to support or pay quality teachers with that same vigor. For my conservative friends I am all for testing teachers and only paying the high-quality ones the money they deserve. The truth is the question is not is public education having struggles, or if public education faces challenges. It does. The question is what do we do about it? If all we do is argue over finely engineered talking points then nothing gets done. You want to fix schools? 1. Raise teacher pay. 2. Only pay the ones that show growth in their students and have students perform in terms of test results. This will drive the low-quality teachers out of the profession while also promoting the recruitment of highly intelligent people that are choosing other careers over teaching mainly for the pay. 3. Parents have to involved in the process if not no idea will change anything even if it is highly researched.

Now on to the idea that kids are not better off in schools. I cannot speak for every school and every student across America. There are some students that I would imagine excel in an online environment. I can speak for my school however. I have taught for 12 years at an urban inner city high school that is 99% African American. We went through the Covid year and what made it apparent to us is that our kids do much better in school. This is for many reasons including:
1. 40% of the families that we serve have limited or no access to the internet.
2. Almost all of the parents that we serve have 2 to 3 jobs meaning if little Johnny is at home all day, they have no real way of ensuring that Little Johnny is even in class much less participating.
3. We have kids and I know from actually talking to the kids that the only meal they might get during the day is the breakfast and lunch they receive from us.
4. Gangs, I know this one is going to lose some people or seem extreme to others. We do not have the traditional things for kids to do in the community that I serve. There is no bowling alley down the street, or local park that they can go to mostly because of gang related violence. What does this mean? This means that kids in school are far less likely to join the Gangster Disciples or end up on the streets. I had a player that died directly because of the Covid shut down. He was not in school and we were not able to track him so he ended up joining the GD's and was shot during a drive by shooting that is all too common in the area that I work. Kid had the potential to be one of the best linebackers in Mississippi, but as we say around here far too many times the streets got him. Yall, I have buried 2 to 3 kids a year all 12 years that I have taught so to tell me that kids are not better off in school, or that this has been debunked is crap. No offense to anyone but I know from a life lived in education that this is not true. I will put up an article in this post that backs me up on this especially in the Covid era, but I sure someone will find fault with it because it does not agree with the narrative they are trying to promote. Look, I do not care if this gets up votes or down votes. I just wanted to share the struggles of a real-life teacher and coach in a real-life situation.

https://www.exchangefamilycenter.or...l-kids-are-missing-out-on-more-than-academics

 

[johnson86-1]

With all due respect, you are looking at the finished product of those employees without consideration of how they got there. Nobody said home schooled kids or private school kids can’t adjust - eventually - to the real world as well as public school kids. But if that adjustment is delayed to a later in life period than it would normally happen, it can be both socially and economically detrimental to their lives. Talking about lost early career income opportunities, poor job satisfaction, early adulthood relationship / marital issues, and other struggles here.

You're just assuming there is some adjustment and making up problems with no basis. Lost career income opportunities, poor job satisfaction, early adulthood relationship/marital issues and other struggles are all things that people from public, private, and home school environments experience. If anything, I would suspect that they are the least prevalence among schools from private schools, just because socioeconomic status correlates relatively strongly with most of those issues.

Ultimately, its less about the schooling method in particular than it is about general exposure to people from different backgrounds and interests. EVERY child needs to learn, at the earliest age possible, how to interact with other kids who are not from their same neighborhood, church, rec sports league, etc. That’s not even remotely up for debate.

This is idiotic and makes me think you haven't been around people that have different backgrounds from you. I know very successful and happy people that have lived their entire life in a bubble. It's really not hard and you don't even have to be particularly well off. Just have to have parents that could afford a modest private school and have good enough jobs to afford the same for your kids. It's not necessarily what I would like, but you can't really point to anything in their life that is objectively missing. Their kids are in a safe environment surrounded by peers with parents interested enough to pay for school and almost without exception also interested in having their kids involved with some form of church. They interact all day with people who are educated and contributing members of society. They aren't hurt at all career wise by not dealing with people outside of their bubble. A lot of them manage people that manage people outside of their bubble environment and when they do have people that don't live in their bubble enter it in a worksetting, it's the people from outside the bubble that have to adjust. They are active in volunteer organizations, active in their church, active in social organizations. What are they missing so badly that it's not even up for debate that their parents somehow deprived them?

The simplest and most straightforward way for this to happen is by enrolling the child in a public school, but it isn’t the only way. External activities like Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts, volunteer opportunities, early life employment / summer jobs are other ways.

The biggest problem is too many parents who go the home school route do so out of a larger agenda of insulating / protecting their children, and controlling all their relationships. That always does way more harm than good. We’ve all seen it, especially in the south. Kids not allowed to hang out with or date other kids from outside the same church (or church in general), overly strict curfews and micromanaging of social life and activities, and so forth. Homeschooling and private schooling, when done for the right reasons and within the proper scope of a child’s development, are both very good things. But they aren’t always done for the right reasons.

 

[Pilgrimdawg]

With all due respect, you are looking at the finished product of those employees without consideration of how they got there. Nobody said home schooled kids or private school kids can’t adjust - eventually - to the real world as well as public school kids. But if that adjustment is delayed to a later in life period than it would normally happen, it can be both socially and economically detrimental to their lives. Talking about lost early career income opportunities, poor job satisfaction, early adulthood relationship / marital issues, and other struggles here.

Ultimately, its less about the schooling method in particular than it is about general exposure to people from different backgrounds and interests. EVERY child needs to learn, at the earliest age possible, how to interact with other kids who are not from their same neighborhood, church, rec sports league, etc. That’s not even remotely up for debate. The simplest and most straightforward way for this to happen is by enrolling the child in a public school, but it isn’t the only way. External activities like Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts, volunteer opportunities, early life employment / summer jobs are other ways.

The biggest problem is too many parents who go the home school route do so out of a larger agenda of insulating / protecting their children, and controlling all their relationships. That always does way more harm than good. We’ve all seen it, especially in the south. Kids not allowed to hang out with or date other kids from outside the same church (or church in general), overly strict curfews and micromanaging of social life and activities, and so forth. Homeschooling and private schooling, when done for the right reasons and within the proper scope of a child’s development, are both very good things. But they aren’t always done for the right reasons.

excellent post. I also think that participating in athletics will do as much to prepare kids for real life as anything they can do. Success, failure, competition, teamwork, hard work, adversity, it’s all there and an important part of the maturity process for all students.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Thru the years I have worked with so many public school, private school, and homeschool kids that I am confident there is no one singular best way to educate. With that said, I have not found homeschool kids to be better prepared in most every way. Many who I have worked with that are homeschooled are doing so due to learning/behavior issues and the 1on1 is best for their needs.
The one thing the homeschooled kids do tend to have is a strong support system that will do the work needed to make sure the kid has a path to college/move forward.

For all types of education, those with support and involvement at home are overall more prepared- its as simple as that.

I actually agree with this, for this point in time. It's like a 'good' public school.....if you have good students, the school will be good. Nothing the 'school' itself does to be 'good'. If you bring in bad students to a good school, that school will eventually become bad.

Same with homeschoolers and private schoolers. For the longest time, only weird kids homeschooled (for the reasons you mentioned). That has absolutely changed. Now many good students are homeschooling. I think you will see a whole new wave of homeschooled kids and those stereotypes will go away.

But....old stereotypes take a while to die out. I mean, people still think the public school is the best way to educate kids, and that's been debunked a while back. It's just what people know and are used to.

 

[johnson86-1]

I don't think anyone thinks that homeschooling causes poor interaction with others in 100% of cases, nor does anyone think every single public schooler is good at interacting with others. If that was your point, you're arguing with a strawman.

It's not that they think it means it 100% of the cases, it's that they think it's some big causative factor, when if anything it's such a small factor you can't distinguish it from noise.

Holy semantics, Batman!

That's not semantics, that's a huge difference if you're trying to draw conclusions. I presumably know lots of people that who were formula fed and lots of people who were breast fed (just to pick another issue that people like to attribute a lot of causation to). You don't see the difference between saying I only know one person who was breast fed and I only know of one person off hand that was breast fed? Maybe if you'd been home schooled you would have learned better logic.**

 

[Smoked Toag]

Ultimately, its less about the schooling method in particular than it is about general exposure to people from different backgrounds and interests. EVERY child needs to learn, at the earliest age possible, how to interact with other kids who are not from their same neighborhood, church, rec sports league, etc. That’s not even remotely up for debate. The simplest and most straightforward way for this to happen is by enrolling the child in a public school, but it isn’t the only way. External activities like Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts, volunteer opportunities, early life employment / summer jobs are other ways.

When will a person be around this diverse group of people, later in life, all the same age, in a classroom setting or even a high school campus setting? I'm not saying whether or not it's beneficial, I'm simply questioning if school is the best way to accomplish it, and if the drawbacks are worth those benefits.

The biggest problem is too many parents who go the home school route do so out of a larger agenda of insulating / protecting their children, and controlling all their relationships. That always does way more harm than good. We’ve all seen it, especially in the south. Kids not allowed to hang out with or date other kids from outside the same church (or church in general), overly strict curfews and micromanaging of social life and activities, and so forth. Homeschooling and private schooling, when done for the right reasons and within the proper scope of a child’s development, are both very good things. But they aren’t always done for the right reasons.

This is really not the main reasoning for homeschooling (or private schooling) in the modern era. And it's hardly confined to the homeschool and private school community.

 

[johnson86-1]

When you make wholesale changes to a learning environment you've got to know your demographic. But I've also heard the performance assessment of children who did have internet and home computers was disappointing as well. We knew children are easily distracted and it played out in the remote learning environment. Not being critical bc I don't have a good answer for it all, but that's what I'm hearing.

This is what our school district saw. Affluent students did ok, not good but close enough that you couldn't 'definitely say it was due to remote learning, and it got worse as you went down socioeconomic status and got disastrous for the schools with lowest SES students.

We are fortunate to have sane, non-political educators that actually think what they do is important, and when they saw what happened after missing essentially one 9-weeks of in person learning, they were adamant that they would not shut down again unless forced to and also made that opinion reasonably well known, so that anybody that shut them down would have to take the political heat.

 

[harrybollocks]

"A lot in our society needs to change." That is a profound statement only a morally good person and critical thinker would make. You must have totally bossed the new math. Sorry, sarcasm again. I'm a bad man.

"The post that reiterates why math has changed and compliments the OP on their involvement in education at home has 1 upvote and 2 downvotes."

Someone doesn't appear to know much about the constant teaching innovations over the past century and the claim that all of them would discourage memorization and promote critical thinking. There's no evidence the new math will do what supporters claim, and the rigid binary, memorization vs. critical thinking, is misplaced. Memorization is essential for critical thinking. You need to know something to think critically about it. There's no evidence that students only memorized material prior to this new method that's "guaranteed to work this time and produce awesome critical thinkers, trust us." FYI, there will be a new innovation in a few years to replace this one. Some people, like me, are just not so good at math. It's fine.

"The post that rambles off some sarcastic claim that we want to lower the bar to close the achievement gap has 2 upvotes and 1 downvote."

Right. Just a sarcastic claim. No evidence standards are being lowered for the sake of equity except for this evidence and I could easily point out more examples:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-curriculum-guidelines.html

https://katu.com/news/local/debate-emerges-over-racism-and-white-supremacy-in-math-instruction

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

Do you have actual data and personal interactions to back that up or are you going off of your own thoughts on that? Do you work with college students on a regular basis and working with both kids that come from home school, public, and private schools to make that observation?

 

[harrybollocks]

I agree with the dad part. Good dads are essential. How many people on here can problem solve and even respond because they're able to think critically and problem solve without ever having learned math using this new method? Maybe I'm cynical but I know a few things about the exaggerated claims for pedogogical innovations that never live up to the hype.