
Some overwhelmed parents are abandoning at-home schooling - finphil
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-growing-cohort-of-overwhelmed-parents-unengaged-children-drop/
======
unfocused
At-home schooling, when you weren't prepared and cannot provide the time, is
not at-home schooling.

The educators were caught off-guard. The parents were caught off-guard.

Let's not make decisions about what method works and doesn't work. These are
unprecedented times. Just make sure your child reads about topics they enjoy,
and do activities they enjoy.

Reading and Writing are the most important skills. This is for a short period
of time anyways. Relax, you only need an hour or 2 a day. Ensure your child is
happy and healthy. Those are the most important measurements.

All the best.

~~~
tenaciousDaniel
I fear that we'll come out of this with a warped, unreasonably negative
perspective of several things that are actually very good and beneficial.
Remote work is one thing that might take a hit, because people will think that
_this_ is what remote work is like. I've been remote for 2.5 years now and
this experience is _not_ representative.

I fear the same will happen to the notion of home schooling.

~~~
deanCommie
Before COVID, the only people I saw home schooling were doing so out of
ideologic incentives.

(Other than extreme edge cases).

I see no issue with home schooling receiving a negative rep.

Unless you're a trained educator, I see no benefit to home schooling children
and depriving them of standard curriculums and socializing.

(I'm biased having only experienced positive public school environments in
Russia and Canada. Perhaps there is some dystopia with the American Public
School system, but the root problem is America, not public schools)

~~~
tarsinge
Not everyone has the same image or experience of school. I see School as a day
care for children to allow parents to work during the day, with some
inefficient learning on the side. It's very convenient, but not the only
option.

Personally I learned nothing (edit: not much) in school, was bullied, it was
an awful experience and all I remember is watching the clock all day waiting
for it to pass while daydreaming. Elementary school was like one year to learn
to make additions, one year multiplication, for how many hours in school? To
finally get a lot of children struggling to read in 6th grade. Middle school
was more or less the same for me. I feel like I was the subject of an ideology
too.

~~~
screye
I was similarly bullied through school and would easily get bored with the
ease of the content.

I think partly because I never had the fine tuned sense of social interaction
that many are naturally blessed with and paired with a dangerous tendency to
let pigheaded curiosity be a guiding principle.

But, the the stuff it has taught me is indispensable. It was never taught
explicitly, but without school I would have grown up completely oblivious of
the invisible walls, thorns and highways that inhabit the society we live in.

Like if you want to infiltrate into a rebel base as a spy, you would want to
spend a lot of time learning their mannerisms and adopting a persona. School
helped me tremendously in fitting in, because my type of person would have
certainly ended up an outcast in this society, if I was to be homeschooled.

~~~
tarsinge
Yes that's pretty much the question I'm trying to answer, and how outside
activities with other kids could maybe replace that aspect of school.

------
scop
The problem is that homeschooling and schooling in a classroom environment are
two fundamentally different things. Tasking parents with mimicking a school
environment and school schedule at home is a recipe for failure that teaches
parents that they can’t teach their kids.

We have been homeschooling our eldest son for a year now and can never imagine
going back to full time school. It has brought an immense amount of freedom
and bonding to our family, not to mention an incredible amount of life
experience for him with various activities (grocery shopping, museums, parks,
hikes, etc). However, it was miserable to start primarily because we tried to
mimic the exact school environment and schedule at home; a complete disaster!
Schools are designed to teach a large amount of children; parents and homes
are designed to teach individual children.

Would you use an entire cafeteria kitchen to cook lunch for your kids?

~~~
ryeights
Do you have any concerns about your son’s social development? If so, how do
you address these? Personally, I would be worried about accidentally isolating
my kids and causing them to miss out on certain soft skills.

~~~
gliese1337
Do you have any concerns about the social development of kids who go to
traditional schools, where they interact solely with other kids close to their
own age or teachers who are much older than them and whose interactions are
rigid and artificial?

Sorry to sound snarky, but the idea that homeschool kids are somehow socially
stunted is a myth that needs to die. If anything, it's the other way around.
Homeschool kids are exposed to a much wider variety of social situations which
develops a broad base of social skills and preparation for adult
responsibility much more effectively than the stifling and artificial
environment of public schools does.

~~~
sharadov
Are you telling me that a homeschooled kid will get exposed to more social
situations than one in a public school where every race, ethnicity, and social
strata are represented?

~~~
dataduck
You can cherry pick in both directions. Are you telling me that a kid at a
socially homogeneous local school of kids all within the same age bracket will
be exposed to more social situations that a homeschooled one who regularly
deals with shopkeepers, tradesmen, and people of all ages and all walks of
life?

~~~
astura
What does interaction with shopkeepers, tradesmen, and people of all ages and
all walks of life have anything at all to do with homeschooling??? Kids can
(and do) go to school and do all that too.

------
mjh2539
The irony is that for kids that are actually homeschooled, they spend maybe 2
to 3 hours per day doing schoolwork. That kids spend so long in public school
is not to their benefit, but to the benefit of those that need to keep their
parents away from them for 9+ hours a day.

I can barely attend several hours worth of digital meetings, and I'm an adult.
Imagine a 7-year old trying to do the same thing. Ridiculous.

~~~
john_moscow
The school isn't just about the academic part. It also teaches you invaluable
soft skills. How to handle conflicts, how to present in front of the audience,
how to make friendships, how to respond to bullying, how to find like minded
people. All those skills are extremely important in your average team
environment, and learning them as a kid is much easier than guessing why
you've been laid off, while your useless, but very empathic colleague got
promoted instead.

~~~
centimeter
I didn't learn a single one of those skills from attending public school.
Every public school I attended (and I attended several, since my parents were
chasing the accelerated learning program every time it moved) was not only a
huge waste of time, but actively psychologically harmful.

Based on the data I've seen, what I describe is a typical or even better-than-
average public school experience.

Private school was infinitely better once I started going, and my homeschooled
friends (who I met at university) are, on the whole, vastly better adjusted
than the people I attended public school with.

Let's be honest - public schools' primary functions are to act as a daycare
center and subsidized food distribution site. If you child is at all
intelligent, you're probably better off leaving them at home with some books
than sending them off to PS17851. I know I would have been better off that
way!

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Let's be honest - public schools' primary functions are to act as a daycare
> center and subsidized food distribution site. If you child is at all
> intelligent, you're probably better off leaving them at home with some books
> than sending them off to PS17851. I know I would have been better off that
> way!

Would you have been though? There's a core curriculum that I really doubt most
kids would learn if they had their own way. Even with intelligence there's
lots of stuff kids would never learn as it never interests them. What are the
odds that a child is interested in Shakespeare, civics, biology, and
trigonometry? We're drug through a lot of it kicking and screaming (to an
extent), but it has value to have gone through it.

~~~
centimeter
> There's a core curriculum that I really doubt most kids would learn if they
> had their own way.

Insofar as kids learn (and retain) things at all, chances are they were going
to learn it on their own anyway.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that it basically doesn't matter what
you forcibly try to teach kids between the ages of zero-13; their later
academic outcomes aren't going to change much anyway.

This matches my anecdotal experience; kids who end up being good in some field
are always way ahead of what public schools (which are forced to cater to the
lowest common denominator) can teach them anyway, and kids who end up not
being good at a field will probably pick up the same information they're being
taught naturally, at a more natural and less painful pace.

> What are the odds that a child is interested in Shakespeare, civics,
> biology, and trigonometry

High? Lots of kids choose to read books on various topics with their free time
and focus, which they would have more of if they weren't swamped with
pointless make-work.

Plus, it's not like you're actually going to get a comprehensive or even
useful understanding of any of those things from the bottom 80% of schools.

> but it has value to have gone through it

Even if this is true (but I suspect the "kicking and screaming" might actually
be net counterproductive), I really doubt it's worth the cost of spending
something like 25% of your waking hours in Factory Labor Simulator for the
first 13 (or whatever) years of your life.

------
colecut
The overwhelming number of websites utilized for an elementary school
education drastically overcomplicates attempting to complete my son's school
work..

Just for math alone, often times to complete a single day's activitiy, four
different websites are involved, usually all requiring different
login/password information.

Get assignments from Google Calendar Watch instruction on youtube. Do lesson
on Zearn.org. Watch video on Khan Academy. Complete quiz on iReady. Take
picture of your scratch work so you can upload to google calendar.

I am a technology junkie and always have been, but I definitely miss the days
from my own schooling where everything I needed to both learn and do in Math
for the day was in a single textbook... It's sad how much we have complicated
things with technology.

Now they have completely changed how math should be done, require many extra
"steps" that seem to be unnecessary that parents were never taught, and do not
provide a book at all for reference of what these new methods are. It almost
seems like they are trying to make learning as frustrating as possible.

~~~
karatestomp
Oh god, so much this. If they'd just use books and worksheets and the
occasional Youtube video maybe, it'd be _so_ much better. We had prepped
worksheet packets for the first couple weeks and it's been hell since those
ran out.

I'd also love just a simple (please, just the plainest of HTML, it does not
need to be another fucking app or "webapp") checklist of what's due for the
current week, per day, with a check for "submitted", a check for
"received/acknowledged", and a check for "graded" (so don't bother submitted
or updating if you didn't already). Maybe make the name of each thing linkable
when relevant.

[EDIT] Oh and

> Now they have completely changed how math should be done, require many extra
> "steps" that seem to be unnecessary that parents were never taught, and do
> not provide a book at all for reference of what these new methods are. It
> almost seems like they are trying to make learning as frustrating as
> possible.

Yes. Ugh. "Word sentence". No. It's a fucking equation. I swear I can't figure
out what they even want half the time because they're using weird terms. And
this is _first grade_ math.

~~~
karatestomp
Edit option’s gone but I meant “number sentence”, of course. Heh. And yes
that’s really what they call them. Half the kids can’t even kind-of tell you
what a sentence is in English and they’re using them as a metaphor in math.
Clearly a good and useful idea.

------
asdff
Lots of kids in LA seem to be spending all day skateboarding 20 people deep on
the less crowded streets, playing full court basketball and soccer matches
with hundreds of spectators at the supposedly closed public parks. Summer
break began when LAUSD went online for a lot of kids.

And its no wonder. 15% of students have yet to be in contact with their
teachers during this survey period (1). In south central, 16% of students lack
basic internet access. It's hard to imagine this perspective for a lot of the
HN demographic, where we imagine internet has been ubiquitous in the U.S. for
decades, but this is still not the case for low income areas in one of the
largest cities in north america.

1\.
[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-22/getting-...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-22/getting-
free-internet-hard-for-poor-students-despite-provider-promises)

~~~
bjourne
Wasn't it obvious from the start that that would be the result? The idea that
children should study at home during the school closure is ludicrous. I'm
almost 40, have a Master's degree and have self-studied my whole life but I
often have trouble being efficient when I'm home. So no way children seven to
fifteen years old can do it.

Maybe children with academic parents will get some home-schooling, but
children from poor backgrounds won't. Those are the ones who will be paying
the price of the lock down. Two, three months without schooling will
significantly hamper their development.

~~~
musicale
> Two, three months without schooling will significantly hamper their
> development

Are you sure about that? Having gone through lots of school, I'm fairly
certain that missing three months of it would have no negative effect on
anyone's development.

~~~
MereInterest
In this case, we have an existing study. Some countries habitually have a
three month gap, with schools closing at the end of spring and opening at the
beginning of autumn. Overall, a three month gap in schooling results in
sliding back by one month's worth of learning. So, missing three months of
school results in being four months behind where students should be.

Source:
[http://www.ldonline.org/article/8057/](http://www.ldonline.org/article/8057/)

~~~
jotakami
I believe the previous comment was implying that progress in school and
personal development are not the same thing.

------
irrational
We have 5 kids in school. Every single kid has a different schedule of zoom
meetings, different websites they are supposed to be doing, etc. It is a
nightmare to try to organize. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for the
school district to figure out an organized way of doing this for the next
time. Ideally there would be a single place we could go that would show
everything for all of our kids on one page with what they should be doing that
day and the links. Instead we are getting text messages from this teacher,
emails from another, we've even received snail mail letters!

~~~
dumbfounder
3 kids here, pre-k, 1st and 2nd grade, so no self-directed learning of any
kind going on. 2 working parents, one of us working much harder than normal
during this time. We are doing our best to have school directed by our au
pair, but her English isn't great so learning new material is not really
possible. We just focus on the basics, have them read, write, do math, art,
throw in a bit of science, and line up as many zooms with their
teach/classmates as we can handle. I was pushing too hard for a while, and the
kids were getting upset, which stressed me out, which stressed them out. Came
to a head when my 1st grader was screaming at me that he didn't want to do a
book report and then literally ran away down the street with me chasing after
him. I made a decision to stop stressing that day. I eased up on the
deliverables, shortened the school day, and made sure we prioritize de-
stressing. Now my wife likes me again.

Without an au pair it would be bedlam and they would learn absolutely nothing,
and I recognize that we are far ahead of a lot of people in terms of
resources, so I think barely anyone is going to actually have a good
experience with at-home schooling unless the kids are older, can actually
manage the schooling themselves, and are actually motivated to do so. Or you
have one heckuva stay-at-home parent.

~~~
dbcurtis
You have my sympathy. Two things are working against you: 1. You are being
asked to do something you did not sign up for, and 2. You were blind-sided and
did not have time to prepare.

We home schooled our child from the time we noticed pre-school was not exactly
going great, until the day they left for college. (They were given a choice at
middle school and high school to stop homeschooling, but they chose to stick
with it.) We chose, we had time to prepare, and yet it was work.

Some things that make homeschooling easier: 1. Adjusting parent work/career to
make time. Unfortunately, not so much an option for you. 2. Coops groups. Not
an option for anybody during lock-down. 3. Curriculum themes. The way home-
school parents handle multiple kids in different grades without going crazy is
to pick a theme and assign appropriate work to each kid, example: The next 6
weeks everybody's world history is going to be South America, so 2nd grader
does 2nd grade work product, middle schooler does middle school work product,
high schooler does high school work product. But as a parent, at least the
search space for resources is cut by 2/3's over having everyone do something
different. I suspect your school isn't thinking that one through for you,
either.

Frankly, if your school district lets you get away with it, it might be a good
chance to try "unschooling" for a while. Unschooling is: Study what you want,
but you must work on something. It will be an opportunity for the kids to
learn how to be more self directed. ("unschooling" should not be confused with
"raised by wolves" \-- I've seen that, too, call unschooling, but the result
isn't quite the same.)

First grade is a little young for that to work well, though, I must admit,
unless they have already developed a reading habit. But heck, maybe even that
is OK -- "read what you want, but you must read for X minutes." Kindling a
love of reading at that age goes a long way later on.

Anyway, hang in. De-stressing is an important goal. I remember when mine was
little and just starting violin -- at some point when the stress-meter was
climbing, I decided it was more import that practice be fun every day than to
accomplish everything that the teacher assigned every week. That was the right
call, trust me.

------
daxfohl
I'm having much more success designing our own curriculum for our 7 and 4 year
olds, than dealing with random emails and updates and changes and new things
to try and blah blah blah from their schools. It takes a couple hours max to
cover the bases and progress is like 2x the rate they were learning in school.

Our schools have been great at trying to stay engaged, but I feel it's more
stressful than helpful at this point. Schools are still trying to accommodate
a huge range of kids, and trying to keep up with everything they're putting
out is a huge time and energy sink. I appreciate the schools wanting to keep
involved but the way things are now it's a distraction.

~~~
chasd00
The only work my kids (10 and 7) are getting from school is maybe one question
per subject per day.

My wife and I have designed our own curriculum to fill the gaps. The kids are
done with their "day at school" after about 3 hours. They work with me in the
morning, I've been able to keep up with their questions and guide them through
their day while doing my own work and meetings. It's a lot like being a team
lead again haha

EDIT: my kids are in DISD ( Dallas ) so the bar isn't exactly high. Even
during regular school they were in various tutoring and clubs to fill the gaps

------
hirundo
This pain point may be a disguised blessing. The sudden demand for remote
education might break the lock by local educators, exposing most subjects to
global competition. Instead of getting the best teacher within walking or
busing distance, parents are starting to level up to picking them from
anywhere on the interweb. In many places it's the difference between no choice
and some choice.

It's like the difference between being limited to books only by local authors,
and being unlimited. It's worth a good deal of pain to get from here to there.

It is a massively less demanding task to curate and monitor your kid's
education than to personally conduct it. And even the curating and much of the
monitoring can be outsourced.

~~~
whatshisface
There is enough resistance to the idea of letting people choose between
schools within walking distance that I can't ever imagine it being permissible
to choose schools within an unlimited distance.

~~~
asdff
Public magnet schools exist in many districts.

------
decasteve
I’m in a similar boat though the school system where I am put mental health as
top priority right from the start and very little emphasis on distance
learning. The teachers do send resources in a do-what-you-want and let us know
how we can help.

My kids do a bit of math with pencil and paper, some reading, journaling, art,
and whatever creative or constructive activity they want to do. After supper
they play video games, watch movies/shows/documentaries, play D&D, and
FaceTime with their friends.

They do a lot more cooking and cleaning around the house than they would
normally do. They’re becoming a lot more self-sufficient around the house.

~~~
serpix
One week in I noticed some serious pre-burnout symptoms due to the stress of
working full time, being the cook, cleaner, safe parent and teacher of the
house. So on my week off from my kid (I co-parent every other week) I first of
all wept due to the stress and how much of an asshole I was due to all the
pressure and then decided fuck it I'll lower my expectations on what a work
day is and what a school day is. We stop the schooling at 2pm latest, doesn't
matter if something is unfinished it won't matter. We don't do all the
assignments and I don't try to be the best possible employee as it is god damn
impossible under these conditions.

~~~
marktangotango
Here here, we experienced the same thing. Somethings got to give and I'm not
going to ruin my relationship with my kids forever, for a job or one semesters
grades.

------
dgentile
HS student here. Our district made the decision to keep grades, or you can
apply to drop distance learning if you meet certain circumstances. This is
incredibly frustrating for me since 1) I can't slack off and work on my C++
projects ;) and 2) It's a ridiculous amount of work, and some teachers are not
exactly being fair. Our school has the IB program, and I am in the
"Precalculus" class before HL Math 1. The teacher is a bad teacher anyway in
school, and yet out of school they are worse. We are given instruction in
these obscure note packets that are basically a list of formulas. Every single
time I need to solve the online problems we are given, I end up on Wikipedia,
or Khan Academy... so why am I taking this class?

In other classes, the teachers don't seem to grok that we have other classes,
and instead will give us one "trivial 1 hour" assignment a day.

I'm starting to feel burnt out, unlike during actual school which was
manageable for me. I would rather we were given an assignment or two a week in
each class, or shorter assignments each day. (Thankfully two of my teachers
get this)

Also, google classroom can be frustrating if the teacher doesn't use it well.
Let's say they post a couple announcements a day, along with assignments, and
there was a project assigned on Monday. I have to go hunting to see if there
was something. It gets buried in a big stack, and sometimes it will just up
and surprise me on Friday when it pops up as "Due today". This I blame more on
google than the teachers, since I think there should be a way to visually
represent the assignments that isn't a twitter feed.

~~~
ImaCake
I find math courses (as an adult doing a masters in biostatistics) can be very
poorly taught sometimes. I think this comes from a desire to "keep things
simple" and elegant. But the lack of practical examples and no alternative
explanations can make it really difficult for some people to learn concepts.
Sometimes you get a good maths course, but many are terrible.

As a suggestion, you could look to torrent a good textbook if you can find
one.

------
cbsks
My daughter is in preschool but she still has 10 zoom meetings a week plus
extra activities to do. Both my wife and I are working full time which means
she will occasionally miss a zoom meeting, and she rarely does the extra
activities.

Luckily it doesn’t matter much since she’s in preschool. The only thing she
really gets out of it is that she gets to see her teachers and friends.

I don’t know how people who work full time and have multiple kids in school
manage to do it. I’m exhausted and we have it relatively easy. My heart goes
out to all the single parents out there!!

~~~
interestica
Zoom meetings for preschool?!

I had no idea.

~~~
cbsks
Oh yeah. It’s as much of a disaster as you think it is. Half the kids aren’t
paying attention or wander off. The rest are all talking at once. It took a
few days for the teachers to realize they should mute everyone at the
beginning of the call and only unmute one at a time when it’s time to
participate.

My daughter enjoys seeing her friends and teachers so we call in as much as we
can, and as long as she is dressed and interested in it. It’s a lot of work
for my wife and I though. If our work schedules weren’t flexible we’d skip
them entirely.

------
iandanforth
I'd like to hear from parents who are managing well.

I have a hypothesis that in households where children's behavior is better
regulated (through example, discipline, or disposition) things are going
better than they would otherwise. (I have evidence from my own childhood that
this would be the case), but I'd like to know, if this situation is manageable
or even _an improvement_ for your child's education, what are you doing to
make it so?

~~~
lemmox
This is my experience. One part luck, one part upbringing, one part privilege.
Both my kids are thoughtful, even tempered, curious, and tenacious. Often they
are called "mature" for their ages (8/11). Such is not a description that fits
most of the children in their peer group at school. FWIW most would probably
call me a strict parent. Not in a punitive sense, but we do keep our standards
high and do not normalise behaviours that we don't like.

Honestly the school board's efforts have been phenomenally bad. We're in BC,
Canada, which appears to have said "hey teachers, here's your Zoom license!
Get on that e-learning thing - kthxbye!" In aggregate it's a bum deal for the
teachers, students, and parents. Hopefully it works for some but it doesn't
for anybody that I know.

However... I took control of the curriculum. I'm not a teacher so I didn't
presume I knew best: I based it on the Khan School Closure Schedule [1]. We
sprinkle in a few arts & crafts projects with their mom, some nature walks in
the afternoon, some Khan math and language arts in the morning, and an hour or
so of coding after lunch. They have a few extra chores around the house -
nothing too onerous. We've increased their music practice sessions.

I've been working from home for several years so I did not have much
adjustment to my working situation. It took a bit to find our education groove
but, by and large, I'm happy with it now that we've deprioritised the
haphazard din coming from the teachers.

My wife's impression is that both kids are performing at a higher level than
they were in meatspace school. The kids and I agree.

I could probably sustain this indefinitely as my kids are kind of self-
directing their way through the assignments. I'm keen for the new normal to
kick in but, from my POV, this has unexpectedly turned into one of those
"golden years" moments for me. We're making some memories and the kids are
fine. Lemons and lemonade, I guess.

[1] [https://keeplearning.khanacademy.org/daily-
schedule](https://keeplearning.khanacademy.org/daily-schedule)

~~~
iandanforth
Hadn't actually read these schedules, they seem great, especially the Maths
first and done with "school" by 2pm bits.

------
jeffrallen
As a parent in a crisis situation, your job is to provide emotional stability
for your kids. So you need to ensure your own physical and emotional health
first (see also: "put your oxygen mask on before helping others"). So if "home
school" has to take a backseat to showing the kids that "this is different,
but this can be healthy/interesting/stimulating too", then so be it. And some
days are good homeschool days, some are less. Take each day as it comes.

However, juggling work and home school is just impossible. In a two salary
family, someone needs to go on disability or take unpaid leave or whatever.
Your kids need you right now more than your boss does.

------
daxfohl
Anybody else with the opposite problem? I find the at-home schooling quite
fun. At-home work just sucks though -- new product dev right now seems so
disconnected with reality. That said, obviously fortunate still to have a job
at all.

------
ilamont
Remote K-12 education has given me a newfound respect for parents who
effectively conduct home-schooling full time.

It also makes me realize how much kids are missing by not being in a classroom
with their peers and a professional teacher.

~~~
vzidex
I've always wondered what the learning outcomes were like for homeschooled
kids vs. those that attended school (public or private). My assumption has
been that homeschooling is less successful than sending the kids to school.

~~~
ghaff
Generally speaking, what research I've seen mostly says that homeschooled
children are more successful on various outcomes than average. However,
homeschooling is hardly random and presumably means more parental involvement
than average, among other differences that are probably fairly difficult to
tease apart.

~~~
asdff
I feel like economic outcomes would be more aligned to socioeconomic factors
than anything. The economic success of your parents determine your future more
than your schooling for the most part. More telling would be measuring social
skills.

~~~
jki275
Home schooled children generally get plenty of "socialization", it's just with
adults rather than with large groups of children. All of the ones I know had
social skills at or above average.

And yes, socioeconomic factors play a huge part in outcomes.

~~~
jerf
I find the "socialization" argument to be one of the weakest, honestly. Being
able to "socialize" in a group of, say, second-graders with one teacher to 25
students is probably worse than useless; it's a pathologically bad
socialization environment for spreading bad habits and incorrect expectations
created only by the schooling environment in the first place. Unless you
become a second-grade teacher, it'll never come up again, and you should
actively _not_ use a lot of the socialization skills you "learned" in that
environment. While better than literally sitting in a room by yourself, I
can't rate it above much else, and "sitting in a room by yourself" is not
actually the alternative on offer. (After all, the _parents_ aren't going to
be able to stand that either, except in extremely pathological cases which are
going to be pathological no matter what.)

If the schools were set up more like Montessori schools, this argument against
homeschooling would carry a lot more weight. Age-based cohorts are
pathologically bad environments, and if you look at history as a whole, a
bizarre exception to the normal human environment. If it wasn't for the fact
that the people arguing happened to grow up in that environment and thereby
consider it normal, despite how abnormal it actually is, nobody would be
arguing it's a good idea.

~~~
asdff
Its not the in class socializing, but out of class. Hanging out with your
friends at lunch. In the halls. Walking to and from school. If you try
socializing in class you get sent to the principle for being disruptive.
Meeting kids your age in your area and seeing and talking with them every day
is the social aspect, not class time.

I was educated montesorri until middle school, and while there was plenty of
socializing it was ultimately detrimental imo. A couple of us including me had
serious trouble getting assignments done with all the distractions and were
always in the principles office as a result. One kid just had to work in a
separate 'office' because he could not actually get his stuff done with his
friends there in the class room available to talk all day. I didn't get my
work ethic up until high school, didn't really apply myself until college, and
to this day I struggle with self discipline and staying focused on the task at
hand.

~~~
jerf
"I was educated montesorri until middle school, and while there was plenty of
socializing it was ultimately detrimental imo."

So, you went from what I describe as a reasonable environment, where you did
OK, to what I describe as a pathological environment where suddenly you had a
lot of trouble, and apparently mostly (but not entirely) recovered when back
out in a more reasonable environment.

This is basically what I would predict with my theory. You were damaged by
entry into a pathological environment. How would you be if you had never been
exposed to it? How much more damaged are those who never knew anything else?

I don't think your experienced is evidence against my point... it's evidence
_for_.

------
hackermailman
Since this is only temporary one thing to try is what Erik Demaine did as a
home schooled kid, his father told to look up whatever he was interested in
and pursue it directly in the library which for him was programming games and
origami. They're just going to hard reset the school year anyway

------
pjdemers
My local high school district went to online classes. The district said 10% of
the students "disappeared". They haven't shown up for a single class or turned
in any work, nor even answered a single email.

~~~
joezydeco
That’s nothing. One teacher in our high school has seen a 39% drop rate in her
classes. And this is an honors teacher.

------
codekilla
I have six kids, eldest 10, so 3 in school, other 3 pre K and younger. I think
I essentially gave up today on online learning. I decided to grab some math
circle books and a whiteboard. I’m also going to get the Mathematica for
schools setup and teach them myself. I essentially have to make a choice
between doing my job full time at home, or letting them essentially whither
into gaming/YouTube addicts. Not sure what will happen, but school for them
has been a joke so far.

------
Maultasche
We've also been overwhelmed juggling a full time job (while working at home),
but I've learned to compensate by picking and choosing what they do. My
childrens' school is throwing more work at them than they could possibly
handle (elementary school kids cannot handle huge amounts of self study), so
there's no way they can do it all.

So I just pick a variety of lessons, intersperse them with periods of free
time throughout the day, and if everything doesn't work out, oh well. I'd
rather have them do less than having them be stressed out and me feeling
stressed out from having to do so much.

I've been emphasizing reading practice with some math exercises, where they
can be self-directed and letting the other stuff (which means lots of time for
me) only be occasional. I've found they've made some significant improvements
in reading, so I'm content with that.

------
deskamess
Ontario, Canada reporting.

This is the general note at the top of the weekly schedule we get
(paraphrased):

"Students in Grade 4-6 are to be doing 5 hours a week of at home learning -
total Math, Language (French and English), Science, and Social Studies"

That's 1 hour a day. The schedule that a teacher has provided luckily takes
close to 2+ hours a day if you do it diligently. There are still issues that
come up in terms of clarity of question, or how much depth an answer should
have. Word problems are especially hard - I am not sure how to _teach_ the
analysis and solution of word problems. This is going to have a detrimental
effect on my kid in spite of my ability to help them. I supplement with Khanh
Academy but she is so focused on achieving Mastery she spends a long time
there. Sometimes I see her guess her way through some problems.

------
cachestash
"“A part of me does feel guilty,” said Ms. Belyea, who lives in Toronto. “I am
the parent, and sometimes kids have to do what they don’t want to do. But it’s
just too much. I can’t fight with him every day like this.”

Having an Asian mother, this all just sounds so alien to me.

------
axguscbklp
I think this might be a great thing for those kids. They'll actually get to
experience reality outside of the rat race for a bit longer than they
otherwise would have.

Based on what I've seen, I'd say the following... Kids who love book learning
do it voluntarily, for fun, whether or not they're formally in school. On the
other hand, kids who don't love book learning don't get much from it one way
or another no matter how hard the parents try, unless the parents resort to
measures so overbearing that the kids become psychologically deformed as a
result - and even then, those overbearing measures only work on some kids.

------
newshorts
My 1.5 year old is not in school, but I’d like to wonder aloud how damaging
this might be to our 1 year olds.

Our daughter was in daycare at 2 months (both wife and I work full time). She
adapted and quickly developed a very strong and social personality.

She was totally the type of kid that would greet new people, very confident.
Even finding the occasional random grandma to pick her up.

Now when she sees people on our walks and doesn’t wave or give any indication
that she wants to interact, she definitely more frightened of things than she
used to be.

I fear this whole thing is messing with her personality.

~~~
heeen2
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_anxiety](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_anxiety)

It is a natural development process in most children.

------
glenvdb
Good. A home is not a school.

That's not to say you can't do lots of learning at home, but the way that
learning takes place will (and should) be completely different from how it is
done at school.

------
jvvw
We have primary school aged kids and after the first few weeks, have decided
to just do a token hour a day on the work set by school, although we try and
do other 'educational' things in some of the other time, but not following any
curriculum. I only work 3.5 hours a week (already remotely before all this)
but can't imagine what this is like for anybody working full-time.

I think the school is trying really hard to provide guidance but has fallen
into an awkward half-way house where they have provided resources but not
quite enough to make them work without some prep by the parent and extremely
cooperative kids!

I feel like we should play to the strengths of being at home and do stuff
where one-on-one (or one-on-two!) works better, following their interests,
helping them with the stuff they are actually stuck on it (or in the zone of
proximal development in pedagogical speak), reading and just enjoying spending
precious time together. My husband is taking off half a day's leave a week
(what else are we going to use it on this year?) to look after the kids for an
hour a day too, which has been a lifesaver and give him some time with them.

Also, I think most people trying to do this home education thing at the moment
are way too busy to write about it!

------
AndrewKemendo
I'm almost there...it's impossible to have two full time working parents also
homeschooling + meals.

Technology isn't anywhere good enough yet that you can just give a kid a
computer, no matter what the curriculum or the other side is doing (zoom,
altitude etc...) and let them go.

I'm really of the mind that this is a unique period and that I'm not going to
stress all to death that they didn't get their SOLs in for a few months.

------
tragomaskhalos
I am homeschooling my autistic son; his (mainstream) school have stipulated 3
hours of lessons a day, and we are hitting that. With the proviso that,
obviously, I am nowhere near as good as a proper teacher, I'd argue that he is
actually benefitting by getting more of the 1-1 attention that he needs than
he would be getting at school. The downside is that in order to provide that,
I need to be pretty much full time with him for those 3 hours, which is tiring
and time-consuming (kudos to the professionals - teaching is hard work!), and
interferes severely with my actual job (although the company are v
supportive).

The key I have found is:

\- Focus on the core subjects, viz English, Maths and Science, but do mix in
other subjects as well;

\- Just bin some other subjects entirely (specifically, those he's not going
to be doing for GCSE);

\- Know at the end of each day what the lessons and topics are going to be for
the following day, as this reduces stress all round;

\- Stick to some sort of timetable, albeit needing to be flexible because of
work; we always do one hour lesson first thing, and a second mid- to late-
morning, leaving just one after lunch.

------
ghaff
A more broadly pessimistic story from The Economist with some numbers around
things like Internet access:
[https://www.economist.com/international/2020/04/27/closing-s...](https://www.economist.com/international/2020/04/27/closing-
schools-for-covid-19-does-lifelong-harm-and-widens-inequality)

------
obiefernandez
If anyone is curious about how "unschooling" or "relaxed homeschooling" works,
I've been writing a blog about my ongoing experience with it and our 12-year
old.

[https://medium.com/exploring-wisdom-unschooling-and-world-
sc...](https://medium.com/exploring-wisdom-unschooling-and-world-schooling)

------
hindsightbias
Those of you here with kids should already have an underemployed tutor/helper
working with your kids, and looking for an au pair for Fall. This is an
investment opportunity for those with means while the other 90% falls behind.

It takes a village, but it’s unlikely your village will be highly functional
before 2021.

~~~
iandanforth
Are you suggesting remote or in-person?

~~~
hindsightbias
Yes

------
supernova87a
I'm not a parent, but I remember as a kid in the 80s watching PBS specials
during the day on science that were packed with interesting content. I stayed
out of my parents hair during the summer watching these things. Yes,
admittedly I was probably not the typical child.

But are there not public service lecture series on Youtube by teachers (funded
by foundations, etc) that have produced videos for all kinds of grade levels
and subjects? It feels like we have the world of knowledge at our fingers, but
can't find anything productive to watch? Is it not possible to at least occupy
a couple hours of kids' time with Khan Academy videos?

Why do parents have to make up curricula to teach?

~~~
imhoguy
The problem is that open medium like YT also contains ton of distracting and
low quality content. It is too easy to let kid click on some "5 minute tricks"
garbage or celebrities bait.

------
hinkley
I feel like we should be collecting a list of things to tackle given this huge
social experiment.

The first one is air quality, but it sounds like the next might be, “yeah,
teaching isn’t so easy is it? Maybe that skill deserves some compensation,
hmm?”

~~~
geomark
I think most people are realizing it isn't so much the _teaching_ aspect as it
is the daycare function that schools serve. So the discussion might be about
compensation, but it is very much about how much what I would call "structured
daycare" is worth.

------
olliej
I mean it’s fair - you need support systems to support it at the best of
times.

In NZ there is the NZ correspondence school for children that can’t get to a
physical school.

It provides the curriculum, materials, textbooks, grading, etc.

But the US treats homeschooling as a system to allow parents to indoctrinate
kids rather than actually teach them so provides no such support (even though
their are people who are homeschooled due to actual need and whose parents
want their kids to be educated).

Couple that lack of support, with the lack of choice or real warning, and that
many parents still do have to work and you’ve got a quagmire that is
understandably overwhelming.

------
twomoretime
I feel the proportion of students taking school seriously has been gradually
decreasing over the last decade or so.

And now we treat college kids like children. It's hard to believe today's 18
year olds are old enough to vote.

These aren't just rose tinted glasses occluding my view. I don't think it's a
stretch to suggest that people in general were expected to grow up a decade
sooner than today. That's the price of increased living standards - delayed
adulthood and reduced fertility. Then its the generation after that suffers
from immature parenting.

------
valuearb
I understand how they feel. I’m being asked to serve as part time IT
specialist, Nath Tutor and Booboo Nurse while trying to bill hours on my
clients project.

I’ve also given up on tracking their assignments, I just give them a printout
of the days of week each Monday and ask them to fill it out with due dates to
organize themselves. Fortunately my kids are early teens and actually care
about getting good grades.

------
Simulacra
I remember a friend of mine in high school was pulled out to do homeschool.
The parents had a family friend who was supposed to come over and teach them,
but after a while, Family friend just come over and sit on American online all
day… It was a couple of years before anyone realized the kids were not being
taught anything. My friend “graduated“ but he didn’t know how to do
multiplication.

------
jasonv
Been homeschooling my teenager for a few years. First year or two were huge
learning experiences for all of us. It took a lot of work and prep and, among
the adults, a bit of negotiation to cover the topics.

It would be tough to suddenly have to take on, or cover, someone else’s
curriculum. Just understanding the requirements, time intervals, and external
expectations can be a real challenge.

------
KopitarFan
My daughter is in special needs pre-school. They do a 15 minute kinda "wakeup"
session at 9am and then a craft session at 9:15. Honestly, it's useless. The
kids can barely pay attention and it's just an all around mess. We're honestly
thinking of stopping because it just stresses my daughter out and she's really
not getting anything out of it.

------
dang
There's a related thread at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011419).

Normally we'd merge threads that are that similar, but I couldn't figure out a
good way to do it, so maybe they're different enough in some subtle way.

------
dabbledash
It isn’t really shocking to discover that people don’t have the bandwidth to
take on an additional full time job.

------
amiga_500
Parents who both have to work because mortgage/rent now requires two salaries
are going to find this next to impossible.

Yet they are living in a house that most likely stood during their parents'
time and then it required just one income.

What changed? Lending against household income instead of primary income.

------
jinushaun
I'm currently in this situation. Home schooling would be easy if we were a
single income household where one parent remains working and the other
dedicates their whole time to home schooling and preparing meals. But we're
not. So are a lot of other parents.

~~~
grecy
I absolutely don't want to criticize, so I hope this doesn't come off that
way. I'm wondering if this situation is making you (and people in your
situation) re-think some of your life choices.

Do you think in the future you will make changes so you can live happily off a
single income to give you more freedom and ability to adjust when something
like this happens? i.e. smaller house, less cars, less consumption?

~~~
jinushaun
You're assuming everyone else has that option. Smaller house? Less cars?
What?! I grew up with two parents making minimum wage. I have that choice, but
others don't.

~~~
grecy
Sorry, I didn't mean to assume that at all.

I was just asking if it's something you are thinking about, and if this
current situation will have long lasting impacts on your financial decisions
going forward.

------
gridlockd
Schools are daycare centers, the curriculum only expands to serve that
purpose.

So why not use this opportunity to cut the bullshit and focus on reading,
writing and math?

All of the other stuff is eventually forgotten anyway, to no detriment.

------
sunsetSamurai
Hopefully, this will drive some parents to appreciate a bit more the job that
teachers do, I've heard so many parents trash-talking teachers' work. It's not
easy dealing with a bunch of kids.

------
LockAndLol
Maybe this will help show parents just how valuable school and teachers are.
Maybe they'll actually vote or even show some initiative when it comes to
school budget and teacher salaries.

------
swayvil
Good! There are infinitely better ways to spend your childhood than in
"schooling".

Sitting at a desk and filling your head with "important information" is
relatively crappy.

------
zitterbewegung
Is the issue that the parents can't help the students with homework? In Grade
school I generally did all of my homework. Sometimes my parents would help but
it stopped after going to high school. They did get me in an ACT prep course
and I also took the SAT early since I was in a gifted program.

~~~
bobthepanda
TFA says that the general problem is that

1\. Parents are now the primary enforcement mechanism for doing schoolwork,
which is not a role they have necessarily been trained to do

2\. Teachers do not coordinate the amount of schoolwork, so parents are in the
unenviable position of essentially executing multiple lesson plans in place of
the multiple teachers, each which is probably complex in its own right.

2 was a problem when I went to public school normally and 8 teachers each
giving 45mins-1 hr of homework easily added up and ate into free time. Now
parents are actually exposed to the problem.

~~~
whatshisface
> _1\. Parents are now the primary enforcement mechanism for doing schoolwork,
> which is not a role they have necessarily been trained to do_

Parents were always the primary enforcement mechanism for doing homework, what
would the school do if a kid was getting all Fs because they didn't care? The
_most_ a school can do is force kids to be quiet, and even then if the kids
refuse to be quiet the school can't punish them - a child that does not
voluntarily submit to punishments like sitting and not talking can only be
sent home.

~~~
jonathankoren
How do you plan to enforce this quiet time while holding down a job in another
room, or conducting a video call, or trying to code something up while a 6
year old screams constantly?

~~~
whatshisface
How did you do it when they came home with eight hours of homework?

~~~
jonathankoren
This may come as a shock to you, but I didn't have to be working a job at the
same time.

------
hoseja
This just shows how many people don't have healthy respectful relationships
with their children.

------
JungleGymSam
Parenting is hard. Giving up is the wrong thing to do for the child.

~~~
brianpan
Teachers and school district are not prepared to provide a curriculum for
distance learning. It's takes months and years to develop a curriculum and no
one had time to do that. Teachers may be doing their best but there's nothing
wrong with stepping back and choosing to provide a different experience for
your kid. Preparation for adulthood happens in different ways and parents
should recognize that.

Also, parenting is hard and involves trade-offs every day. There are always
going to be things you give up on to win the battles you can win.

~~~
nonbirithm
> Teachers may be doing their best but there's nothing wrong with stepping
> back and choosing to provide a different experience for your kid.
> Preparation for adulthood happens in different ways and parents should
> recognize that.

Would this statement sound as reasonable in non-pandemic times?

It feels like public schools would still be a better option if the choice were
still available. It isn't, but as a result I feel like people who would have
been able to go to school are missing out on something beneficial. Especially
given how important expensive pieces of college-minted paper are for more and
more careers, and how competitive it is to get a chance at earning one in
public schools alone.

If I had children, which I do not, I would rather choose the teachers with the
time available to prepare the in-depth curriculum specifically designed to
earn the chance at the expensive piece of paper with some proven degree of
success over what I could provide by myself, alongside what time it takes out
of work and all that implies. That is assuming they have no difficulties in
learning however. In that case the schools would likely be unprepared.

But of course nobody has that option now, so I would probably have much the
same experience as the parents in the article. I'm not sure what else we can
do in the short term.

~~~
brianpan
Exactly, these are crazy, never-before-experienced times. In the short term
there will be compromises. We should recognize that and give ourselves a
break.

------
apatters
Even when I use the web link I get stuck at the paywall and can't read this. I
thought pages that require login were banned from HN?

------
SethMurphy
I and mostly the students Grandmother now are home schooling a first grader in
the NYC public system and would like to provide a description of what our
situation looks like to better facilitate this discussion for those that are
not living though this.

1\. Everyday there is a video conference call.

This communication is mostly about trying to keep a relationship with the
teacher and sharing stories they are writing only if a student desires.

2\. There is no teaching, just lesson plans.

The responsibility of the actual schooling has been left completely up to the
caregivers at home.

3\. Schoolwork is expected to be uploaded daily.

There was no set way to do this. We are simply taking photos of the work done
on paper (and at times screen shots if a login is shared for an activity) and
pasting them in a google doc for each day in the students NYC google drive
account.

4\. There has been zero specific feedback on any of the work submitted.

The only accountability has been an online sticker chart where parents award
award stars and teacher do also. We have given 1 star a day for completing
assigned work, and 2 for a day when it is done with less struggle to maintain
attention. Each parent has their own view of what a star means.

5\. Writing has been the main focus over the past month.

My child already struggles with “writers block” even in school. We are
fortunate to have a retired teachers assistant in our household who is able to
do one-on-one teaching. While not trained or experienced in first grade
education with the attention my child receives I have seen more improvement in
the past month than the previous three months by a long shot.

6\. The schooldays often goes later than when in school, and rarely earlier.

This is skewed by a new 9:00 start time, so the actual time may be less, but I
would say it feels like more. It took at least 3 weeks to get into a rhythm
where the days did drag out from morning to night.

7\. There is no homework anymore.

Well, more correctly homework was initially part of the daily lesson plan, but
we always did it during the day.

8\. Reading, social studies and science have been done almost exclusively
online.

This is the easiest for us as it is mostly self directed at this point.
Additionally no work needs to be uploaded. IT started with Social Studies and
Science each day, but they are now alternating days.

9\. Friday’s have just become catch up days.

This is great, but in our situation was not necessary. We are hoping this
means a 4 day school week.

10\. We left NYC to a place where we have space to have school in a separate
room behind a closed door.

I don’t think it would have been possible in our NYC apartment to limit
distractions. There is also a younger sibling that requires attention and
provides distraction to the student. In addition we now have ample outdoor
space to allow the children to play with zero pandemic anxiety involved.

11\. We still get assignments for the enrichment classes (music, art, physical
education, and foreign language) separate from the primary teacher.

The first three are generally videos posted of the teacher providing
interactive instruction. Foreign language is done with an online lesson and
mimics social studies and science comments above.

The morning conference call does not address these at all.

In summary, my child has probably been doing better or as well as most in
their class, and I don’t think they are falling behind. However, this is due
to the time we have to teach them ourselves and not the attention given by the
teacher. The teacher has been good at creating lesson plans and lowering our
expectations, but other than that has been diminished to a technical support
role in our case. There has been little to no remote teaching. We do have the
ability to call hotlines and request more help from the teacher, but I can’t
comment on those methods.

------
jiux
I’m a single, full-time dad to two girls - a six year old kindergartener and
two year old toddler.

I’ll share some of my observations and thoughts so far (in no particular
order):

\- It’s nice to be around them more. Seriously. I personally invest a lot into
their development and seeing them positively grow is a great feeling. Being
around them more during the day seems to amplify this. “Time” is finite.

\- I put my daughter into private school and the expensive monthly tuition
bill still came at full price. Was it fair? I don’t know. I knew I could get
by financially so never brought it up with hopes it might just help a teacher
keep a paycheck. The teachers are passionate and are really trying with
distant learning too. If anything, they deserve more.

\- No longer paying for a babysitter nor after school care returned a lot back
into the wallet. This actually turned into a new and positive financial
investment adventure. I’ve saved more money in the last two months than I have
in a year. ”Wow” is the feeling.

\- The heightened risk around handled food has mentally “forced” me into
eating exclusively at home from grocery store goods. We three were a 99% eat-
out/takeout everyday family beforehand. Surprisingly, the adaptation has been
a lot easier than expected. Eating out was almost never for self-pleasure,
just convenient usually. This also has helped save lots of $$$.

\- The commute to work has lightened up a little. I think maybe 10ft (+/\- a
foot or two for you anal type). The car has been with a full tank for over a
month. ~5 miles in this timeframe, all of which for grocery store (wow more
money saved).

\- Morning commute consisted of driving girls to school and babysitter, then
to work. That short distance in the car alone cost me ~1 hour each way, so ~2
hours of time returned daily. I normally lay outfits out the night before, the
toddler is usually chill about what outfit to wear, and the school requires
uniforms, so morning prep was fast and smooth, usually. Maybe 30 minutes
returned here.

\- Standard of cleaning dipped lower than desired once we became the three
musketeers. New found time went as fast as it came here. Having our apartment
a little more clean feels good though.

\- My official title at the 9-5 is “software engineer”, so the concept of
working from home is realistic. Doing so with children as a single parent is
where reality hits the fan too. Just one child around is not too bad, doesn’t
matter which one. Having both means girls argue, fight over stuff like who
gets the last corndog, if Barbie should or shouldn’t go stand in the corner in
timeout for doing something bad, so on. My concentration skills with work have
been tested here FOR SURE. It’s easy and then it’s not. Productivity is
overall on average higher when they take an afternoon nap and lower when awake
and about.

\- This whole online learning concept sounds nice on paper and might be the
best alternative next to in-person schooling, but man it really is difficult
to pull off during the week for me. An hour or two a day? I’m already writing
this at 3am if that tells you anything. That might be realistic to some, but
it’s not for me, and I’m not even dismissing any opportunity to save time. For
example, I have it figured out when I wake up: first use the restroom, wash
hands, then proceed to brush teeth after washing hands, but before drying.
This saves from wetting hands and drying with towel twice. When time is at a
premium, it makes you think about weird stuff like that. I try for weekends to
catch up on daughters schooling. We are a week and a half behind. I also
emailed the teacher on my own behalf to simply let her know I’m having a hard
time keeping up and to ask if she had any tips or suggestions to offer.

Overall, social distancing hasn’t phased us since we keep to ourselves in our
private time for the most part already. No real negatives experienced on a
personal level and our health is good. I suspect this concept of online
learning might be easy for some, if not most, but it sure as hell hasn’t been
for me with time already at a premium.

My girls and I will get through it, just like the rest of you reading this
will.

------
DiffEq
Just want to take exception to what you have said here. The issue is a matter
of culture, not of access to teachers or the Internet. I home school my
children and they have NO access to the Internet, have had no other teachers
except for myself and my wife and yet you would not find them shirking their
educational opportunities like this. We taught them discipline, to learn, to
value education, and a love for knowledge; after that we could not keep them
away from education. They were teaching themselves and pulling ahead of their
peers years ago. They used pencils, paper and books...libraries and the books
in them. That is not to say they don't love the outdoors; they also love to
hunt, camp, hike and play baseball but they keep it in it's proper place. My
children are the way they are because of our family culture. If those children
had such a culture then this would not be a problem. But the truth is that the
parents hand their children over to the schools and then that is it. They are
not involved in any other way...it is no wonder the children are the way they
are.

~~~
avianlyric
This reads very closely to just blaming parents for not being good enough, and
not raising good enough children.

While I’m sure family culture is incredibly important, we shouldn’t forget
that growing up in such a culture is an incredible privilege. One enabled by
having moderately wealthy parents.

Being moderately wealthy doesn’t mean having large saving or a fancy house. It
means being able to provide 3 meals a day and clothes for your children. It
means having enough time after work to pick up your kids, and read them a
bedtime story.

There are many people living in the western world who aren’t that wealthy. Who
have children and work 3 jobs just to keep them fed. You may even be tempted
to say that the parents are irresponsible for raising children without proper
financial stability, but that doesn’t help the children they have. It just
provides an excuse to ignore a real social problem.

~~~
nugget
Watch Captain Fantastic - one of my favorite movies.

What most kids really need: time, attention, and role models who instill the
values mentioned above (intellectual curiosity, love of reading/learning,
creativity, achievement.) Kids are pretty minimalist when it comes to money.

~~~
kajecounterhack
Thanks for removing the part of your comment that came off as "I haven't
encountered this in my personal experience thus it must not be true." I agree
with your assessment on "what kids really need."

Still relevant: the money-time connection is very real and doesn't have to be
as extreme as "works 3 jobs to put food on the table" to have detrimental
effects to kids. It's pretty hard to influence your kids' lives the more
stressed and busy you are. Life circumstances can come from all kinds of
places, from having to support more folks e.g grandparents in poor health, or
from having kids with special needs, or from having mental health issues
personally or a spouse with such issues, etc -- the list goes on. Also if you
can't home school or private school and your local school districts are total
garbage, your kids might pick up values you can't control very well.

In general the idea <that a parent's ability to instill values on their kids
is fairly correlated with wealth/privilege> doesn't feel like a stretch.

~~~
iateanapple
> In general the idea <that a parent's ability to instill values on their kids
> is fairly correlated with wealth/privilege> doesn't feel like a stretch.

Wealth is one way to avoid a toxic culture - if your public high school is
terrible you have the money to put them into a different school etc.

But you can have a great culture without wealth. In fact I’d argue a great
culture is one of the building blocks of wealth.

~~~
kajecounterhack
> But you can have a great culture without wealth. In fact I’d argue a great
> culture is one of the building blocks of wealth.

That statement is true but also not at odds with the point you're responding
to. The point is that if you start off with less, you need to work that much
harder to build that culture. It's like picking how to allocate skill points
in an RPG. If someone gets 40 skill points to spread along attack/defense/hp
vs you who only get 10 (this is what a wealth gap does), you could allocate
all of them to 1 dimension to have reasonable performance there, but it will
come at a cost. And even then you won't beat someone who had the luxury of
allocating all 40 points to the same thing, since they have more to begin
with.

What really irks me is when folks worship the character with maxed out stats
in every dimension and then for lesser characters they say "didn't grind
enough" or "didn't optimize correctly." Maybe just acknowledge the truth of
the matter, that folks with maxed out stats probably grinded a lot (yes yes,
very admirable) but also started with a better dice roll. And if kids grow up
with less education-centric culture or worse learning outcomes you can't just
blame parents for not instilling that. Some parents can do more, that's
guaranteed. Some parents can't, that's also for certain.

~~~
iateanapple
> It's like picking how to allocate skill points in an RPG

To stretch your analogy:

And then we try to make up for the skill points gap by throwing money at the
unlucky and tell them to just buy some better items to make up for it.

And it doesn’t work.

> Some parents can do more, that's guaranteed. Some parents can't, that's also
> for certain.

But that’s the beauty - you don’t need everyone to be able to in order to
build a better culture and a better future.

> And if kids grow up with less education-centric culture or worse learning
> outcomes you can't just blame parents for not instilling that.

In my culture that’s exactly what we do. It’s not always fair on the parents
but in practice for the community it works a lot better than throwing money at
the problem.

~~~
kajecounterhack
> And then we try to make up for the skill points gap by throwing money at the
> unlucky and tell them to just buy some better items to make up for it.

I didn't assert anything about how we allocate dollars to level the playing
field for parents. Identifying a wealth gap doesn't mean the solution is to
simply throw cash at the problem (though solutions _do_ require money). Pretty
hard to fix family culture if parents can't afford to spend time with their
kids.

> But that’s the beauty - you don’t need everyone to be able to in order to
> build a better culture and a better future.

You certainly have a way of responding to things that weren't asserted in the
first place. The statement you were responding to was intended to illustrate
why we should have empathy for those lower on the wealth ladder. "Culture" is
loaded because it's easier to build education-centric culture the higher on
the wealth ladder you are. Because time, emotional bandwidth, and money are
deeply connected in reality.

Your statement that in your culture you blame parents for not instilling
education-centric culture is the thing I totally disagree with. I don't think
shaming parents is producing results the way you think it is, or producing a
"better culture and a better future," as you would say. Nobody wants to live
in a culture where you get blamed for things outside of your control. And you
should probably recognize that there are limits to how parents affect their
children even under "perfect" conditions. These aren't nice little math
functions where input -> output, these are complex human beings we're talking
about.

~~~
iateanapple
> You certainly have a way of responding to things that weren't asserted in
> the first place.

I thought we were having a discussion and not a point-counterpoint style
debate.

> I don't think shaming parents is producing results the way you think it is,
> or producing a "better culture and a better future," as you would say.

My parents grew up with actual famine, high levels of pollution, horrible
factory jobs etc. So did almost all of my uncles and aunties.

A minimum wage job at Walmart in the US would have provided a huge increase in
quality of life for them.

Yet looking at their education levels they were still miles ahead of the
bottom 25% of US high school graduates.

> And you should probably recognize that there are limits to how parents
> affect their children even under "perfect" conditions.

Of course - but we can’t really untangle the complexities involved except by
trial and error.

I feel we have tried providing more money/funding in the US with overall poor
outcomes.

I’m telling you about a method that has worked - for a different culture in a
worse economic environment. Maybe the success is not from the shaming but in
spite of it - but like I said it’s difficult to untangle.

I’m not even really promoting it as I still remember the pain from getting
caned for getting poor results.

------
arkanciscan
Maybe if people had to actually raise them, people would stop having so many
kids.

~~~
arkanciscan
It's funny how this got flagged. Breeders are so sensitive about their god-
given right to breed.

------
fortran77
Many parents are discovering that the problem with "why johnny can't learn"
wasn't the teachers or the schools.

~~~
aidos
Most parents are trying to juggle a full schedule of teaching and jobs at the
moment. I don’t think it’s fair to compare that against an environment
dedicated to learning (ish).

~~~
rrmm
I feel like the comment was more directed on the kids' parents having to walk
a mile in the Teacher's shoes. And the ease with which it is someone else's
problem to make sure your kid learns.

~~~
duderific
There is certainly some of that. Being a teacher is certainly very difficult.
However, theoretically at least, they are trained to be teachers, and it is
their full time job, while for most parents it is not.

Additionally, being onsite at school there are fewer distractions, and just
the environment of physically being on a school campus conveys that the
primary focus of the day is education.

~~~
bsder
So, what you're saying is that teachers are trained _professionals_ , and that
school environments are _engineered_ to be spaces for learning?

Shocking.

Perhaps teachers and schools don't suck as much as people thought ...

~~~
akman
The context of the comments matter. Just saying...

