
Outschooling in the Bay Area - ahmadss
http://amir.io/outschooling-in-the-bay-area
======
sputknick
I have homeschooled my kids for four years now, and I think this article does
a great job at dispelling common myths. The "socialization" myth is the
biggest, but if you look at homeschool teenagers, they are much more well
socialized in interacting with adults in the real world. One point I would
have liked to have seen: the number of homeschool parents who are former
teachers. More than half of our homeschool friends are former teachers. This
means these parents worked in the public school system, and when it came time
to send there kids decided "nope, I'm not sending my kids through that
system".

As for startup ideas: I want MOOC aimed at younger kids. Right now the closest
thing we have is Khan Academy, and it's pretty good, but a MOOC on a specific
subject, with a series of videos, and questions, and interactive activities
would be a big help.

~~~
learc83
School is so different from any other environment you'll encounter as an adult
that I can't really see how learning "socialization" there is beneficial?
Maybe if you plan on doing time in prison? (I'm only half joking) The only
time I really experienced a similar environment as an adult was my first job
during college at a retail store.

As to your point about former teachers. My mom, who's a former teacher,
decided to home school's my much younger sister last year. She's been much
happier and more productive since then. She still spends time with other kids
her age during archery practice, reading club etc...

However, she actually has time to read books that she likes after school
instead of spending 2 hours a night on homework. She was literally spending
almost 2 hours a night on homework in _elementary_ school. The amount of
stress her teachers put on her to perform on standardized tests was obscene.

~~~
brc
Obligatory....

[http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

"And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They
want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And
popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely
competitive environment of an American secondary school.

Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art,
however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it."
I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school
kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers
by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An
American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a
year."

And...

"Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens.
Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need
to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one
another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as
possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want.
From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage,
and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.

In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing
was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented
overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that
they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens,
the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we
created was barbaric."

A lot of parents get their kids involved in activities which aren't
necessarily for the good of the child except to minimise e chances of falling
to the bottom of the popularity ladder. A ton of effort and money is spent
trying to fit in at school - and as most of us recall - it all simply vanished
the minute you walk out the high school gates, in the same way a prisoners
society is irrelevant the moment they are released back into the real world.

It really is madness.

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
I'm sorry but I gotta call bullshit on this. I see this opinion so much, on
here and throughout pop culture, but I don't think it's true.

From my high school experience, popularity boils down to social awareness, and
inversely, social ineptitude. It really has nothing to do with book smarts.
It's not a zero sum game. You can be smart and popular. In fact most popular
people are smart from my experience.

Most of the popular kids from my high school, 4 years later, are still
popular, have really hot girlfriends/boyfriends, and are doing great things
with their lives. The vast majority of the unpopular kids from my high school
are still pretty weird and aren't doing so hot (although not nearly as weird
as they were in high school).

I know it's not a popular thing to say but some people just get dealt a better
hand than others.

~~~
learc83
I'm not sure how much I agree with the essay, but you really need to give it
more than 4 years. By 10 years out, most people from my high school had
leveled out to a degree--the weird kids were mostly married and starting to
have kids, the popular kids were married and starting to have kids. Things
like hot girlfriends/boyfriends didn't really matter--they'd all pretty much
matured. One other thing I'll point out, the most attractive girl from my
graduating class definitely wasn't the most attractive girl when we graduated.

That being said, we had 2 distinct cliques of popular/smart kids, both of
these groups were in honors/AP classes. Group A was more popular. Group B less
popular (but still more popular than the other various groups), but smarter.
These groups started in 8th grade when the school separated the gifted program
into 2 groups (I was in Group B btw).

Group A (with very few exceptions) partied through college and then married
young. They ended up doing about as well as all the non-popular kids from high
school.

Group B partied less, studied harder, married later, and is making much more
money than Group A.

I think popularity predicts success to a point, i.e., popularity has
diminishing returns. Group A cared too much about the rewards that came with
being popular in high school, so they spent too much time maintaining their
status. The kids in group B were popular enough to get by, but they worked
harder on other things.

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
Yea I definitely agree with you there.

I think it's two camps, the socially aware people, and the socially inept
people.

The socially inept people basically have some behavioral flaw that they
themselves cannot see or understand. Usually it takes until way after high
school to figure it out, like being in a dysfunctional household, or autism,
or cerebral palsy, or something.

Then there's the normal kids. AKA group A and B in your comment.

_________________________

Anyway my conspiracy-theory-of-the-day, and why I posted that comment in the
first place, is that homeschooling usually puts them into the socially inept
camp.

Reason being, these kids are basically being 100% controlled by their parents.
They only have exposure to two sets of ideals and beliefs (their parent's) for
their entire upbringing. It'd only work if the parents were perfect and
somehow treated their child as a true equal (or if they have like 10+ siblings
or something). School mitigates that risk by having another "ground base", out
of control of their parents, to turn to.

I think the whole "everything changes" thing happens because you move out of
your parents house, not because HS ended.

------
sologoub
That's a very interesting perspective that resonates with my own experience
growing up. Although for a completely different reason (collapse of the Soviet
system and with it the funding for good schools), parents in my neighborhood
banded together to create a sort of private alternative to the state run
monster that was imploding.

While we still had traditional classrooms and a centralized place of learning,
the groups were much smaller (10-15 kids) and the programs studied were very
different from the state run schools. We covered all the basics in ~25% of the
time and the rest was advanced or very creative. My favorite was a visiting
professor from MGU (Moscow State University) teaching 5th graders how to
translate Babylonian Cuneiform, including how to infer meaning of writing that
no spoken reference exists for. Not really useful right now, but is the very
definition of cool when you are a kid!

I've been pondering how to replicate some of these experiences for my future
kids and this is definitely interesting.

~~~
andyjdavis
>My favorite was a visiting professor from MGU (Moscow State University)
teaching 5th graders how to translate Babylonian Cuneiform, including how to
infer meaning of writing that no spoken reference exists for. Not really
useful right now, but is the very definition of cool when you are a kid!

Not just when you're a kid. I'm 34 and that sounds awesome.

~~~
icebraining
As an adult, I find it cool too, but I can't think of a single kid I know that
would be remotely interested in it. Half of them would probably be rolling
their eyes before the second word.

~~~
sologoub
That's the talent of true educators, present things kids would normally ignore
in a fascinating way.

~~~
thaumasiotes
This effect is hopelessly swamped by what kids are interested in. It exists,
but it's just not strong enough to be helpful at any kind of scale.

~~~
lfowles
You don't necessarily have to compete with what they are interested in. You
have to compete with the boredom of sitting still at their desk for hours on
end while doing trivial homework/reading assignments. _Everything_ is exciting
at that point and may foster a lifelong addiction... hobby.

------
mdevere
I run an education startup that has unexpectedly attracted a lot of
homeschooled students/parents.

The author asserts, "this is the community where experimentation ... to
educational approaches is happening the fastest", and I am finding that to be
true. The parents are more open-minded and the students are more self-driven.

In fact, it feels likely to me that any dramatic change to the education
system as a whole will start with the homeschool community, if it ever comes
at all. So, my advice to other education entrepreneurs is that this is a good
market to start with.

The author's big conclusion - an impending unbundling of education - is really
interesting to me. It aligns with my own prediction (and the basis for my
startup), which is that students/parents will have a stronger say in who the
right teacher is for them, for any given subject. And, with tools enabled by
tech/internet, the best teachers will be able to scale up what they do and
reach many thousands of students.

~~~
zerop
What is the startup you run? Would like to know..

------
uiri
_I first became interested in homeschooling several years ago after a friend
with six kids began homeschooling in San Francisco out of necessity - the
public school system wanted to send each of her kids to a different school.
Instead of hiring six Ubers each morning she decided to start homeschooling
her kids herself._

Can someone explain how something like this even happens? I'm used to a system
which assigns you a school based on your address/space. If space constraints
change, the child is generally not kicked out. Exceptions are usually made to
space constraints so that younger siblings may attend the same school as their
older siblings. I can understand an elementary, a middle and a high school but
that is only three different schools.

~~~
squidbot
That line interested me as well but for a different reason. Do schools in San
Francisco not have an obligation to transport the children that are assigned
to them?

Actually, I just looked it up the SFUSD page and it appears they do, and they
offer school buses as I suspected. So the rationale for homeschooling by this
person seems, well, irrational. Why would she need to hire six cars when buses
would come get the kids?

------
pcmonk
Having been homeschooled myself, I can attest to most of the advantages he
describes. Personalized education is a very powerful thing, especially for
what he calls "asynchronous learners".

------
tswartz
Kudos to Amir in explaining the outshooling movement so well. I always had a
negative view of home-schooling, but his explanations of why more parents are
doing it today made sense. In many cases, kids can learn a lot more and remain
creative. The big drawback still is that one parent would need to stay home,
but Amir did mention that this could be changing.

------
qsymmachus

      For various reasons, the mainstream regard homeschooling as
      a niche approach suitable only for the weird or the wealthy.
      That’s a prejudice that doesn’t reflect the reality of the
      growing movement I've observed in the Bay Area.
    

I'd like to see the author back this claim up, rather than ask us to trust
him. Homeschooling is a feasible choice for families where one parent does not
have to work full time, which rules out many poorer families.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the idea that homeschooling (or
"outschooling") is the future is, frankly, a pipe dream. It is and always will
be a niche option.

~~~
batbomb
> I'd like to see the author back this claim up, rather than ask us to trust
> him. Homeschooling is a feasible choice for families where one parent does
> not have to work full time, which rules out many poorer families.

In the Bay Area, this would likely rule out families with incomes below $90k
and one or more kids, assuming they want at least a 2BR apartment.

~~~
qsymmachus
My impression is that Amir only had people like himself in mind when he wrote
this article.

------
barry-cotter
I'd say the thesis of the article is that homeschooling will become more
popular and have a large impact on the development of instructional methods in
public schools in the future. The first may be true, the second is not.

The main factors militating against homeschooling are conformity, money and
logistics. As homeschooling becomes ever more mainstream the weirdness hit
people take for it will lessen. Money and logistics are the big things. For
homeschooling, even unschooling, you need at least one responsible adult
nearby and available, usually a SAHM. That means homeschooling is restricted
to the upper middle class, people in rural areas with cheap housing or people
who are really, really willing to sacrifice for it. If everyone around you is
on two incomes and you're on one that better be an excellent income or you
will need to sacrifice a lot.

Homeschooling will have no effect on school instruction, none. The things
mentioned in the article could almost all have been written any time since the
60's. The only exception is MOOCs, which are mostly equivalent to community
college for high school students.

Alfie Kohn and John Taylor Gatto have been beating the drum on how awful the
overwhelming majority of schools are for decades to no effect. The
Sudbury/Summer hill/democratic schools movement grew and then receded in the
middle of last century.

And what's the latest big thing in education? Ability tracking instead of age
tracking, the smallest, least disruptive, obviously good change to the current
system? No, it's No Child Left Behind.

Just give up hope already. There will be no reform.

~~~
capnhaddock
> That means homeschooling is restricted to the upper middle class, people in
> rural areas with cheap housing or people who are really, really willing to
> sacrifice for it. If everyone around you is on two incomes and you're on one
> that better be an excellent income or you will need to sacrifice a lot.

Elizabeth Warren has written an excellent book describing the pitfalls of two-
income families that send their children to public schools. It's called "The
Two Income Trap".

[http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-
Parents-G...](http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-
Going/dp/0465090907/)

In it, she demonstrates that having two incomes isn't the advantage that you
might intuitively think it is. Actually, having a single income and
homeschooling (or outschooling) can make a family more resilient and flexible,
for two main reasons:

1\. A second income earner can be brought in if something happens to the
employed spouse. Two-income families are already tapped out.

2\. Location. If the family doesn't enroll their kids in a public school, they
are free to live wherever they want, so long as the breadwinner can still
commute. This cuts expenses way down. No longer do they have to compete with
two-income earners for homes in a particular school district.

So, while having a parent remain at home is certainly a different lifestyle,
it isn't clearly something that can only work for the wealthy. I know many
homeschooling families who would not be described as wealthy.

~~~
bsder
> 1\. A second income earner can be brought in if something happens to the
> employed spouse. Two-income families are already tapped out.

That's a _very_ specious statement. The second income earner would have to
begin a job search at a point when their secondary social network is weakest
for that task.

In addition, the primary income rarely goes down due to accident. It is more
likely that the primary income goes down due to a area effect: big employer
goes under, depression in the general economy, etc. These will make it even
harder for the second income to come online.

------
bronz
Like many important things in America, children are neglected. Everybody gets
divorced even if they have kids. And everybody works even if they have a
spouse that works, even if they have kids. And we send our kids to public
schools where they learn nothing besides how to be thick skinned. And we are
surprised when the next generation is filled with even more stupid ass holes.

------
sago
This is a staggering and damning indictment:

"It only takes 2-3 hours of study per day to keep up with the regular school
curriculum"

The sheer waste of life that implies about children in 'regular school', let
alone the staff that provide services for them, is staggering.

~~~
hueving
A big component of school is just glorified daycare. Lots of lower income
families send their kids to school mainly for that purpose.

~~~
rmxt
Daycare or not, why is income relevant here? Rich or poor alike, daycare or
learning alike, kids go to school for a multitude of reasons including
socialization, applied skills (shoe-tying, sharing, etc.), and exposure to
things besides television and iPads, none of which hinge on income.

~~~
hueving
Sorry, I should have clarified. Lower income people could not afford the cost
of sending the children to daycare if schools actually sent students home
after 3 hours each day.

Where I grew up, school became the social safety net for children from low
income backgrounds. If the temperature dropped to -10F, they would still not
cancel school because the low income kids received better heat and better
meals from the school.

My point is that in many cases, school isn't nearly as much about learning as
it is to have a safe and stable place for children from unstable households.

------
rayiner
Somebody do this: Uber/TaskRabbit for homeschool teachers. I'd love to get
together with ~10 sets of parents, have everyone kick in $15-20k/year each
year, and maybe a place to host classes, and hire a bright, motivated teacher.
The company would provide the core logistics/materials for passing the Common
Core tests, and the teachers and parents would have the flexibility to design
around that. It'd be cheaper than private school and less child abuse than
subjecting your kids to the public school system.

~~~
qsymmachus

      > Have everyone kick in $15-20k/year each year
      > It'd be cheaper than private school
    

That's comparable to the most expensive private schools

~~~
civilian
Yeah. Off the top of my head I know a private high school that cost 26k/yr,
but you're correct when we look at all the data:
[http://www.privateschoolreview.com/tuition-stats/private-
sch...](http://www.privateschoolreview.com/tuition-stats/private-school-cost-
by-state)

    
    
        > The private elementary school average is $7,355 per year and the private high school average is $13,248 per year.

~~~
lqdc13
Wow that's 2x more expensive than my college was. I think some public schools
are great as long as you tell the student that they are there to learn.

This way it's completely free for the parent and the student learns to be
self-motivated.

------
brc
I have no prejudices against home schooling but it takes quite a leap of faith
to take a kid out of regular schools and start with it. Particularly if the
school is 'good enough' such that the kid is doing well, even though it's
plainly obvious how inefficient the schooling is.

The big issue for me is the vast difference between learning rates and
attitude between kids, but the insistence on keeping them together on an
arbitrary set of calendar dates of birth, rather than aptitude or interests.

Some (most?) parents plainly don't care and are just happy to get the kids out
of the house and in someone else's care. These kids are generally disruptive
and are destined to have a low level of education. I see the need to keep
trying with them despite the low achievement rate, yet at the same time I see
the need to let motivated learners race ahead at their own speed.

Throw in the murky issues of government funding, political interference in
curriculum and entrenched power structures like teachers unions and school
boards and it's not clear to me how a better model emerges from it all.

------
random854
This is not directly relevant to the article, but I see people look at
public/private school v. homeschool as if it's a zero-sum game. Many families
are unable to have a parent stay home the entire day(whether due to money or
due to the parent liking their career-who wants an unhappy, bored teacher all
day?), but ideally "schooling" should be going on in the home as well as in
school. In public school I learned little of value past socialization (I did
have interaction with peers, something my family would not have been able to
give me on a regular basis if I was homeschooled) but I learned a lot on my
own time and was encouraged by my parents to do this. Most children who are
too ahead of the public school curve to benefit from it are smart enough to
teach themselves (with some help from parents in the evenings if needed.)

------
pbhjpbhj
Is flexi-schooling heard of in USA? It is using a mixture of school based and
non-school learning. In essence it is using a local school as a service rather
than adopting its regime wholesale.

Out-of-schooling or outschooling is called "education otherwise" (EO) in the
UK following legislation referring to a parent's responsibility to ensure
their child either attends school or gets a sufficient education otherwise
than in school.

I'm glad they've made the distinction with home-schooling, which EO people in
the UK usually use to refer to mimicking school at home, having a "classroom"
and a parent acting as a teacher. Most non-school based learning is referred
to as "home-schooling" or "home education" by outsiders it seems and very
little of it is actually home-schooling; this leads to a quite wrong view of
kids who're getting educated outside of school as being shut-ins locked away
from other kids and feeds in to the "not attending school means they lack
socialisation" fallacy.

We started flexi-schooling to some success but in the UK it's up to the
individual headteacher (how's that for a centrally planned education system)
to allow it or not and our's deferred to the governors who basically thought,
and expressed, that the only way to learn anything is in a school. My wife and
I are both graduates with science degrees working in our own creative
business, she has a teaching qualification and we've both been leaders with
kids organisations for many years; we work in a semi-teaching role and I've
done IT education with individual adults. Apparently either of us could
educate a class of 30 kids, we do on occassion (sometimes out of school), but
educating our own child(ren) like that or a small group of EO kids is
apparently impossible.

Anyway, we did flexi-schooling for a year (1 day in 10 out of school, we
wanted 1 in 5) without authorisation with the eldest child [ie in opposition
to the school's expressed desire] - tests showed he was excelling despite the
schools anticipation of abject educational demise.

Then the government brought in fines for non-authorised absence from school.
This has weighed heavy, if we had the funds we'd just continue - it's worth it
- but we don't have funds and so we've been unable to continue with what we
consider (and the evidence suggests) is the best paedagogical approach for
this particular child. The legislation is intended to stop people from taking
their children on holiday in school time and their is scope in the system to
accommodate flexi-schooling - and legislative support in the Education Act
(and to a lesser extent the ECHR).

Were our child physically disabled, or indeed mentally challenged rather than
excelling (just bright, not 'gifted' incidentally) it seems the school would
have given greater concessions. Catering for those with exceptional needs is
an area in which flexi-schooling is often accepted and used to great effect.

------
tlogan
I have one point:

* The reason why we have schools is that parents can go to work. Sad but true.

------
enupten
"Normal schools can’t personalize the curriculum and so deal poorly with
asynchronous learners."

Couldn't agree more! Universities tend to be much worse in this aspect.

------
spiritplumber
The problem with homeschooling is that in much of the country "homeschooling"
= "Jesus rode a dinosaur and owned Exxon stock, and so should you" level of
misinformation (I'm exaggerating, but only a little).

I guess it's less of a factor in this neck of the woods.

~~~
qstyk
I'm not sure what you're encountering, but I have yet to meet anyone that
teaches that Jesus rode a dinosaur and owned Exxon stock, or anything remotely
resembling it.

One family comes to mind, where I have to question both their ability and
motivation behind homeschooling, but that's out 100+ homeschool families we
know. Even so, they're the parents, so it's their call.

That said, the success is largely based on the parents' motivation. If they're
out to provide a better customized, faith-based, talent-specific, or special-
needs accommodating learning environment, that's radically different than
doing it to brag about what a great parent a person is, due to the extra
hardship.

Beyond that, not everyone is qualified to do it, as it takes a certain
skillset, education level, preparedness, and patience level that isn't
ubiquitious. Some of that can be accomdated through homeschool enrichment
classes, co-ops, and the aforementioned online learning.

~~~
mavrc
> I'm not sure what you're encountering, but I have yet to meet anyone that
> teaches that Jesus rode a dinosaur and owned Exxon stock, or anything
> remotely resembling it.

I had the same reaction as the previous poster; I'm from rural Idaho, where in
my experience with it, "homeschooling" is a transparent veil for "too
fundamentalist for government-run schools" (which in Idaho, is terror at a
very special level). I'm sure it's not that way everywhere, and I'm sure that
not all rural homeschooling parents are doing so for religious reasons. But
there are places like my hometown, where that is primarily the case.

~~~
kajecounterhack
^ This. I have family that homeschools and it's for this reason,
unfortunately. I also come from a fundamentalist background and almost all the
families I know who homeschool do so to keep their kids away from the "ways of
the world."

A lot of these kids (anecdotally) ended up seeming pretty weird to me. I've
always wondered though if it was the homeschooling or religious schooling that
was the reason, though I'm inclined to believe the latter.

