I have a bachelor’s degree in education. I have a master’s degree in music education. I spent 20 years working for the system and taught thousands of students...
And my number one piece of advice to parents is simple:
Homeschool your kids.
And today I’m going to explain why...
Schools aren't about learning and they are glorified daycare centers.
It’s worse than you think. And it's worse than you can imagine.
Homeschooling is the solution because the world becomes your classroom.
It's one that naturally fuels curiosity and learning happens at your own pace. There's no disruptions. There's no woke curriculum. And there's no Administration HR department making sure that you teach all the right things.
Understand these are your children and you got one shot to make it happen. One shot at what goes into their minds all day. One shot at the environment that shapes what they think is normal.
So yes: Homeschool your kids.
Because once you see how the system actually works…
You can’t unsee it.
God bless each and every one of you,
Dino
We homeschool and most public school parents we meet tell us they wish they could do the same
They lament their perceived time/finance/skill issues that leave them choosing the bottom denominator option for their kids
Everyone knows it's for the best, they just have been so beaten down as to believe that can't manage it themselves.
The only proud public schoolers are genuinely content with their kids being allergic to everything, sedated on meds, gender dysphoric, or all of the above.
Many of the brightest kids I've met were home schooled. They have abundant resources for homeschoolers too. Furthermore, the public education is founded largely on the principles put forward by Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed). He's a marxist that redefine literacy as ~"understanding your position in the oppressor/oppresed hierarchy", not reading and writing, oppression olympics.
This is one of the big reasons that white girls in the burbs often claim to be "non-binary", otherwise white girls are oppressors and the escape is to find a brand that gives oppressed status. Neat huh?
Affluent White Female Leftist = AWFL
edit:
Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril and Oculus, was home schooled along with his 3 younger sisters
Another reason for home schooling is conditioning. They're setup to not think in government alternatives among others:
https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/ac9ff4bbbb5d0d85
Thanks for sharing the primal link.
Excellent article and the highlights were very helpful (more so than a zero hedge article lol)
Crazy how Bitcoiners are so obsessed with homeschooling. In my experience some of the most socially awkward people were homeschooled.
One guy I met who was home schooled has an open marriage with his wife. Apparently homeschooling school didn’t stop him form moving away from conservative values.
People just need to come to terms with this ; some of the children will make and others won’t and that’s just how life goes.
Hate to break it to you but your child is not that special.
Its a fair point. I think many people think in booleans and if they just change one thing all will be different. As a parent you have massive influence but you are correct. Some things, many things are out of your control. In the end you have influence but not control.
I was not homeschooled but I'm a free thinker. One can easily homeschool a kid and give them the same endocrination they get in government schools. One can also send your kids to public school and augment their education. Counter the propaganda.
I think what you do matters. Kids are not blank slates but they aren't beyond influencing. Also, not all public schools are the same. And not all homeschooled families are the sane either.
I know many well socialized homeschooled kids. I know kids that aren't and went to public school. The key to me is being involved and purposefully acting. I'm no fan of the government schools but my sons were home schooled and attended a public charter school.
The worst thing parents could do would be to just make a decision based on political opinion and culture. I know some amazing government school teachers but I am aware of more that are not. Whatever people do they should be involved. Not passive.
You nailed it, as usual
Thanks this is my exact stance. Everything has tradeoffs. I’m not trying to champion state schools but trying to bring reason to the homeschooling discussion.
For those who can homeschool and do it well kudos to you.
But the families who send their children to public schools and they turn out to be great people and contribute to society in a positive way kudos to them.
When it comes to parenting issues, people often become very dogmatic and judgmental. I think it stems from a deep seated need to feel that you are making the right choice, and the presence of people making different choices threatens that belief. The truth is, the best choice is different for different people.
On homeschooling specifically, I think it's something I would encourage people to consider. There are many benefits. But I don't think it's for everyone. Parents who do not enjoy doing it, or who have a tendency to be lazy and disorganized about things may not find it a better choice than public school.
My read of the available evidence is that people dramatically overrate the impact of parenting and education choices.
Our focus is on optimizing the experience of childhood. For now that’s going to the neighborhood school with the kids we already know.
I know a couple, husband and wife are both teachers at Crossroads in Santa Monica. Their 2 sons attend charter schools (I forget the name). I asked the husband about their experience with charter schools and he felt guilty for sending his sons to a charter school because the public school in his district receives less money. And I'm thinking to myself why do you care if a public school your kids do not attend receive less money.
Clearly his wife is calling the shots about where to send their kids and she has no guilt whatsoever. Nor should she because she hasn't committed a crime or sin.
I suspect you have the causality backwards on those associations. Unusual people do unusual things and make unusual children.
Those parents homeschooled because they weren't normal. Their kids are weird because they inherited weirdness from their weird parents.
The bottom line is that government schools are often the only place a person will face physical violence throughout their life and they're complete failures as learning environments.
Only place? That’s not true. Violence can happen in the home at church at the playground.
Violence comes with being human. It’s not avoidable as much as we try to subdue it in this modern society.
And complete failure is a stretch. We have so much recency bias when it comes to schooling. Before the state took over education the literacy rate was terrible especially amongst the poor.
Read what I said more carefully. Violence can happen anywhere, but many people's only experience with it is at government school and almost everyone experiences violence at government school, whether or not they also experience it elsewhere.
That would be an unacceptable tradeoff for most parents if someone were pitching government school to parents from a starting point of not having it. We're used to the abject failures of the state, so most people are numb to them, but it doesn't have to be this way.
But kids fight even before school. Kid on kid violence happens all the time especially amongst siblings.
It happens in public schools private schools I am sure during homeschool social gatherings as well.
Saying violence happened at a government school is due to the government seems to just blame the government for natural human behavior.
So I am failing to see your point in saying that most people only experience violence at government schools.
Does homeschooling stop kids from randomly facing violence in their life?
How much time have you spent in a government school environment?
It's not normal. It's extremely artificial and unaccountable.
Homeschooling radically reduces the likelihood of facing daily violence, which is not an uncommon experience for children in government schools. How could it not?
This would be like saying you're just as likely to face violence on house arrest as you are in prison, just because it's possible in both situations.
Daily violence? Unless you went to a terrible school most kids ain’t getting beat up every day at school. Plus violence at school is more an issue with American parents and the lack of decent morals and values
But even with that kids are running on 100% emotion. You can only do so much to stop violence
We agree about the last point, but daily violence doesn't mean you get beaten up everyday. It means there's a sufficient risk of it that you're scared everyday. That's not as uncommon as you probably think and it should be unacceptable, and I bet it would be considered unacceptable if that were the case at private schools (which it isn't).
Isn't that a reason for American parents to homeschool, then? Or, move out of the country, I guess? It's not like I get to change the morals and values of all my neighbors.
I think it's great if you can afford or have the time to do it. Why not give your kids a head start in learning whatever it is that they're interested in? That's what happens anyway when you leave school right?
I completely agree. In recent years, learning about Bitcoin, money, and how our world works in general, I've come to the same conclusion. School isn't there to truly educate us, but only to teach us what the system wants us to learn. They don't really teach us how the world works; they only let us see a small fraction of reality, and sometimes not even a part of it. I think schools don't create free thinkers, only people who must follow a pre-designed path for specific purposes (to be the new slaves of this era).
Does this #999149 resonates? Similarly, after realizing that the system it is rigged, I too decided and made a choice to homeschooling is the best way. All I am working on, is trying to prove that it's helpful.
Thank you for your thoughtful points.
https://twiiit.com/creation247/status/2012598176138535041
"My child won't experience running around at recess with its peers, because I'm too afraid of it becoming indoctrinated inside the classroom if I'm not there."
"My child will get bullied if I'm not there."
I think it comes from narcissistic parenting, specifically the inability to value the child's independence.
Projection and cope.
Homeschool kids still play in groups and do district sports, and run circles around the kids that aren't even allowed to really play during their 15 minute recess, and are medicated to sit in chairs ingesting government slop all day.
They're also more likely to "bully" public school kids, not because they're mean, but because public school kids perceive everything as a micro-aggression.
I understand where you are coming from and I think your perspective comes from years of being inside the system and seeing how it operates. The truth is that traditional schooling often struggles to balance quality education with the administrative and political pressures placed upon it. When those pressures outweigh the needs of the students real learning suffers.
Homeschooling when done with intention and structure can indeed open up a world of possibilities. It allows parents to tailor the curriculum to the interests and strengths of their child. It creates the opportunity for deeper focus and mastery rather than racing through material for the sake of standardized testing. However homeschooling also requires commitment discipline and resources. Not every family has the time energy or educational background to make it successful without support.
What resonated with me was that the author of the article said he and his wife spend 2 hours or less per day teaching their child.
6 hours of classroom instruction = 2 hours or less of home school and then you have the rest of the day for extracurricular activities
More play time I am all for but I often think homeschooling coddles kids so much. No chance to develop and face challenges that comes with just living life with other humans.
I commend those who homeschool their children and have fantastic results but saying all public education is terrible and waste I disagree with. Some children thrive in those settings. This idea that public education is a mass failure is a fallacy.
American medical schools are filled with children who went to public schools all their life. From all different types of economic backgrounds.
It really isn't. There's no evidence of actual human capital development in government schools and trust me that researchers are trying to find that there is. Smart motivated kids learn stuff on their own and schools take credit for it.
Well if that were the case why did the state develop schools in the first place?
Compliance. Literally, compliance.
Also, why would it be surprising if the state completely failed at achieving a stated objective? That's what normally happens.
But look how many people can read across the economic spectrum.
That alone is worth something?
It's a false attribution. People could read before government school and homeschooled kids read better on average than government school students.
You need a study to tell you that putting kids around their peers is helpful for development?
You're presenting a false choice. There's no reason homeschooled kids can't spend time with their peers and they often do.
Sure, but parents don't select a random subset of peers like school does. Do you think the presumably wealthy parents of homeschooled children will make sure their kids are interacting with poor families? Because those aren't going to be at the private extracurricular clubs.
Another false distinction. Wealthy parents go out of their way to live in catchment areas with other rich parents, specifically to curate who their kids interact with.
Government schools are not even a little bit random. They are for the families that live around them.
deleted by author
A lot of parents noticed this during the lockdowns. They'd finish the entire week's material in a few hours, which left many wondering what schools are doing with the other 90% of their kids' time.
Obviously there are people barely getting by at all, and that's who public schools are for, the lowest common denominator that is without recourse.
That's not the majority of families choosing that option though, there's a strong system of cultural and economic manipulation to steer people this way.
If you have the faculty to even ponder your situation, you have the faculty to choose and execute: #1414513
And what if your parents are as dumb as box of rocks
It's well known that public education majors are the dumbest students in universities.
What if we turned over the nation's children to those people?
But those dumbest students maybe be the decent students in high school who could get into college.
So while they can’t hack STEM studies they may fit well with the knowledge that is needed to educate children.
Plus education doesn’t pay well. If it paid like being a Wall Street investment banker then the best of the best would go into education.
The author of this article (Dino) said he did not go into teaching for the money and he did not leave teaching because of low pay. He left the public school system for 'political' reasons. Teaching was the best part of his job and every year 'teaching' became a smaller and less important component of his job.
My dad and his friends felt very similarly.
The pay is fine for what the job should be but the job is mostly dealing with unnecessary BS.
I don't think the pay is fine for what the job is, but we don't know what the right pay is either because the market is so distorted by the government. (Even for private school teachers, I believe their pay gets anchored to public school teacher expectations, similar to how Medicare somewhat dictates medical pricing for the healthcare sector as a whole).
All I know is, the reason that our brightest students don't go into teaching is because the profession is low paid and low prestige. I heard that in Korea, teaching is seen as prestigious as law and medicine (with lower pay but better lifestyle), and thus you get a lot of talented people go into teaching.
It's fair to note that it's not all about intelligence, but then you shouldn't make the intelligence comparison between parents and teachers.
In almost all cases, parents care more about their kids' development than a government employee does. Why wouldn't you expect that to overcome the intelligence gap? It's not like parents have to come up with the education materials themselves (just like teachers don't). They can use just as good of teaching materials, and often better, than the schools use.