Homeschooling in the Tech Community
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@Dashrender said:
Kids love to learn how to spell words? and the history of the world - I'd bet not. If instead they were able to lead where the learning goes by their own interest with some of that needed information tossed in there, then maybe..
Spelling not too often, that's why reading and writing is one of the few things you need to formally teach. But history of the world? Show me a kid that doesn't find that interesting until school makes it boring. Watching kids go through homeschooling, even spelling is something that my kids ask to do because they enjoy it outside of a school setting.
Kids are designed to learn, they enjoy taking in information and understanding the world around them. It's how kids naturally are. You just have to not stop them from wanting to do so.
I only get to see so many kids who never went to school, but those that I do see love learning those things. My kids LOVE world history, for example. It's a treat for them.
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@Minion-Queen said:
We continued to do traditional testing methods. Partly because we lived in a state that required it for homeschoolers. But it was also a good gauge for us to keep us on track. We just tested once a year (unlike public schools that test constantly) this kept us on track for the most part. But as I said I missed some culturally acceptable things like nursery rhymes and fairytales. Not a huge deal but if you don't have those small bits of information you can miss things later on.
I don't remember getting those in school either. Maybe I did but I don't remember. I know them from before school age. I can even picture the books that I had that taught them.
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@Dashrender said:
Kids love to learn how to spell words?
Of course, my kids are my kids and I have read two histories of the Oxford dictionary and am currently reading "Made in America", a history of the American dialect of English
I'm pretty anal about spelling, using British (Queen's English) form when possible and using the full alphabet, not the American shortened one lacking letters like æ and œ.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Kids love to learn how to spell words?
Of course, my kids are my kids and I have read two histories of the Oxford dictionary and am currently reading "Made in America", a history of the American dialect of EnglishI'm pretty anal about spelling, using British (Queen's English) form when possible and using the full alphabet, not the American shortened one lacking letters like æ and œ.
I use English-English spelling all the time, unless spell check changes it, or I make a strange mistake since English is not my first language. And of course I use French and Mediæval Latin letters like @scottalanmiller mentions, and I'm especially anal about this in words like résumé where not having them changes the meaning of the word, or if people misspell them and put stuff like "resumé," I actually had a guy apply for a job and spell it that way, I didn't correct him, but I did email him a response and spelled it correctly (résumé) and this moron emails me back to tell me I misspelled it.
Having a Hungarian keyboard makes this all pretty easy, especially with the dead key that lets me throw out basically any Latin-1 and Latin-2 character.
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At this point, our daughters are 3 and 6 so test taking isn't even a consideration. Later on, I plan to give the girls tests so that they will know how to take tests and what to expect. They need to be prepared, should they attend a college with tests or want to take AP exams. Test taking is a skill in and of itself, and I will teach it as such. As for assessing knowledge and comprehension, there are many ways to do that without taking tests. Projects, research papers and essays are all good ways to gauge and promote retention and understanding, and for Math, just demonstrating the ability to independently work problems is enough. No need for the unnecessary pressure of calling it a "test".
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That's one thing that I hate about American keyboards, so many standard letters are missing and it is often so complicated to get to them. Now that I have switched to using a Mac it is pretty easy to get to most alternative letters. Just hold down the a, o or e key and the options pop up. Although the autocorrect is a pain as my well spelled words show up, now, as American spellings
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@scottalanmiller Yeah 103 or go to hell!
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Is there a major downside to homeschooling? I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved. Do you find there is anything else missing in the homeschool environment?
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@s.hackleman said:
Is there a major downside to homeschooling? I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved. Do you find there is anything else missing in the homeschool environment?
It takes a lot of time and effort to do it correctly, and it takes some bravery (and money) to hire (or get someone) to help teach something you don't understand as your child advances. Anyone who mentions lack of "social interaction" as a downside, well all I have to say is: if your kid is only getting social interaction through school, your kid is probably pretty damn unhappy and lonely.
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@Dominica You're moving to Spain aren't you? What are you going to do then? I'd have thought going to a Spanish school would have considerable advantages - not least for learning Spanish. Is home schooling even allowed there?
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@s.hackleman said:
I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved.
Social aspect is actually often a positive. Read Hackers and Painters, which is a software engineering book, but it goes on and go about the negative social aspects of the normal school system teaching social interactions that have to be unlearned because in the adult world you can't act like kids in school. The author, a rather prominent figure, believes that homeschooling is better because it teaches how to function in an adult world rather than in the prison-like, "Lord of the Flies" world of the school system.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@s.hackleman said:
I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved.
Social aspect is actually often a positive. Read Hackers and Painters, which is a software engineering book, but it goes on and go about the negative social aspects of the normal school system teaching social interactions that have to be unlearned because in the adult world you can't act like kids in school. The author, a rather prominent figure, believes that homeschooling is better because it teaches how to function in an adult world rather than in the prison-like, "Lord of the Flies" world of the school system.
Plus also I'm sure we're all aware, there are no lonely, unhappy, or anti-social children in school, it's a massive, endless playground of constant social interaction and happiness.
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@scottalanmiller said:
in the adult world you can't act like kids in school.
You should tell that to the people I work with
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@s.hackleman said:
Is there a major downside to homeschooling? I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved. Do you find there is anything else missing in the homeschool environment?
Sure, many downsides. Homeschooling is a massive commitment. One or both parents need to treat it like a full time job. You don't get free daycare most days, you have to actually be with your kids full time. You can't be dual income. For a lot of people, that is very hard.
You need to be able to teach all subjects to a high school level (or better.) Lots of people struggle to do that (but then again, few teachers can so you run into issues with this in the public school system too, my high school physics teacher didn't know science or math and no one learned a thing from her class, for example.) IT folks tend to do well, IT tends to engender highly intelligent, well rounded people who enjoy learning making them relatively ideal for home schooling.
Homeschooling is very costly. You need to provide all of the resources that a school normally provides. Books are obvious. But don't forget all of the science stuff, wood shop, computers, etc. It's very doable, but there are a lot of resources that you will want that normal households do not have.
It takes a crazy amount of planning. Insane. You are becoming not just a teacher but an entire school at home. You have to make curriculum decisions, actually do the teaching, provide the structure, etc.
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@s.hackleman said:
Is there a major downside to homeschooling? I know everyone always goes on about the social aspect, and it is clear that that can be solved. Do you find there is anything else missing in the homeschool environment?
My biggest downside as the main "teacher" was losing my mind some days
The way we chose to do it due to financial restraints was putting together curriculum and lesson plans etc. and spending less than $100 a year. So that meant lots of time on my part. But I will never regret having done that. I am now at the seeing the results. Are there things I should have done differently? Yes, should have spent more structured time on few subjects. Should have moved out of my state before I started, so I didn't have to teach the same thing over and over by law. Should have stayed with the same science curriculum from the start instead of changing so many times.
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@Carnival-Boy We are never going to be in one place long enough to enroll our kids in a foreign school. We will only be in Spain for 2 months. We aren't actually "moving" there, so aren't subject to their education laws, but still subject to our home state of Texas. In an ideal situation, it could be interesting for the kids to attend schools in other countries, but I've read enough on the subject to know that often its traumatic for kids to be enrolled in a school where they don't speak the language. First of all, never having been to school, they would have to learn how to be a student - how to be quiet, stay in your seat, stand in lines, etc., things other kids learn in kindergarten, so that would be pretty rough. Living in a small village and being totally immersed in the Spanish language and culture is going to give them all the benefits of living in a foreign land, without disrupting their lives and routines to a stressful degree.
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Big upside.... I'm sitting here writing this sitting at a table with my children. They want to visit their cousins down the street today - but they can't because their cousins are all in school. We are kidding family time right now while discussing the benefits of family time with the kids
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I just wouldn't want to spend that much time with my kids (and vice versa).
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Thinking back to my own school days, this is what my day primarily consisted of:
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Getting ready for school at an unnaturally early hour that made my sleep unhealthy and unproductive. This included needing to wake up, get moving, figure out what I needed to haul around for the day, shower, pick out clothes that would conform to school rules, etc.
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Wait for the school bus while standing outside (sometimes is pretty brutal weather.) This could be as little as ten minutes and as long as two hours (the longer waits were normally in the worse weather.)
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Sitting on a school bus for at least half an hour.
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Arriving to school fifteen minutes into the first class because the bus was always late. So I never knew the context of what was going on for my first class for the first nine years of school.
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About two hours of "moving between classes" where we would arbitrarily stop "learning" one thing and spend logistical time moving to the next one or doing things for the teacher or whatever.
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Spend tons of time in each class waiting while the teacher explained things that I already understood to other students. (This happened to other kids when I needed help too.) This not only makes classes slow but disrupts interest.
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Regular beatings from the principle for not being able to sit still and quiet all day. (Aspergers can be beaten out of you?) Yeah, that made it easier to learn.
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Standing outside again for 30+ minutes for the school bus.
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Riding the school bus home for two hours or more (for 2.5 hours total, average, per day bus time not including time spent waiting for bus every day. I had roughly an equivalent of a three hour commute each day!!)
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Coming home to loads of busy work so that teachers could pretend that they were doing something.
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