We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – UK home-schooling edition “Now of course it’s true that the nature of home-schooling will vary family by family. That is precisely the point of it.”
– David Frost, Daily Telegraph, warning about the move by the UK government to try and severely curtail home-schooling, which he correctly identifies as a way to enforce ideological conformity on the education of the young – something that the Left (and sometimes also on the Right too) has long sought. Frost writers about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
But what if the pit bull owning classes decide to home school because the DWP lets them not work while giving them generous benefits?
How much would that cost us?
Is it really possible for them to raise worse children as a result?
I used to be rather starry eyed about private schools – but Mr Ed explained to me that I was out of date, that, these days, most (although not all) private schools were filled with the same leftist doctrines as the state schools.
Home schooling does seem to be the way forward – especially as the current Labour government is seeking to “double-down” on Collectivist indoctrination in the schools.
It is very unfortunate – as the last government, in the teeth of opposition from officials and “experts”, was making some progress in education. All that effort is now going to be thrown away – and British schools will turn into the vicious leftist indoctrination factories that schools in some (some) American cities – for example Chicago and Los Angeles.
There is no supervision of home schooled children. Considering prosecution can be sought for parents who fail to ensure their children attend school, simply declare your child is being home schooled and they never need go again. They can sit on their arses for years.
FWIW – after seeing the responses here so far, I feel the need to defend home schooling – I know a ton of families who are home-schooling their kids, most of them in grades 1-9, and they’re doing better than my generation did in actual school buildings.
Stuart Noyes – you are mistaken, there is some checking.
As for home schooled children “sitting on their arses for years” that is also not the case.
bobby b is correct.
Paul.
That is exactly what my partners son has done. No work set by the school. No testing. No checking what so ever.
@Stuart Noyes
There is no supervision of home schooled children. Considering prosecution can be sought for parents who fail to ensure their children attend school, simply declare your child is being home schooled and they never need go again. They can sit on their arses for years.
By “supervision” you mean “government supervision”. I don’t know the situation in the UK but in many US states that isn’t true – more’s the pity. The government constantly sticks their big nose in to private and home education all the time. Surprisingly two of the most leftie states in the union, Illinois and California have some of the least invasive laws allowing parents a lot of freedom in the education of their children (though I hear CA is tightening up on that.)
I know several families that home schooled their children and produced (some K-12) really amazing young men and women. I don’t know what the deal is in the UK but here in the US there is a massive infrastructure in place (full curricula, video support, groups where homeschooled kids can get together for group projects and socialization etc.) So it is perfectly practical to do a very good job homeschooling.
A number of years ago I was at the Illinois state science fair where groups of kids from all over the state (after going two qualifying rounds) present their science projects for judging. I’ve been a judge there many times. There were probably close to one thousand teams there. Many of the more powerful schools in the state there, like Latin Academy, Walter Payton, IMSA, Chicago Lab, and so on (since most of you aren’t from the area, these are mostly private schools with almost unlimited money and resources) sent twenty or thirty teams.
However, the overall winner of the whole fair was a school called Fox Valley Homeschoolers, a small group of about six homeschooling families who worked together to enter the science fair. They went on the represent the state at the national science fair.
Of course no doubt there are a small number of people who “homeschool” without actually doing any schooling, but in Chicago there are many schools where kids “graduate” unable to read or write or do fairly basic arithmetic. I remember reading that in the Baltimore Unified School district 4 kids (not 4%, but 4 individual kids) met the grade level for math. Which is to say — many public schools also apparently have kids “sitting on their arses for years”.
But I think it is worse than that. Many public schools are not educational but anti-educational. Both in the sense that they teach kids that learning is bad, and in the sense that they put the kids in a situation where their only option is to learn crime and other anti-civilization ideas. And, need it be said, also subject many kids to dreadful violence, bullying and intimidation.
To be clear, the US has many really excellent schools, and so you cannot paint all situations with one brush. My kids had an excellent public high school education. But were I to live in Chicago, if I couldn’t get my kids into a decent magnet school they would have been going private (or I’d be moving.) Many people without my resources don’t have that option.
The real solution is, insofar as the public financially supports the education of all children, that the money travels with the child and a large market for private schools be created, and, insofar as kids are home educated, that some of that money be used to provide the necessary resources.
Oh, and no teacher should be in a union. The very idea of unionizing teachers is crazy. The idea of a union and collective bargaining is where there are entirely fungible members. One plumber is pretty much the same as another. That is not at all true of teachers, not by a long chalk. And I think teachers’ unions really are at the heart of the problem. Not teachers. Many of them are amazing people. But the unions that trap kids in terrible situations.
I’ve written too much, but it is a subject I’m passionate about. One of my kids when taking Algebra 1, had a really dreadful teacher. That year, when he was about 10 years old, handicapped him in his ability to do math effectively for nearly the rest of his school career. That despite the fact that I have the resources to buy him tutors and the personal skills to help him. That is one teacher for one year. Imagine the poor kids who have many terrible teachers and parents who can’t afford tutors, or extra books or have the personal skills in math or English to help their kids. The idea that bad teachers should be allowed to hang around in school for years because of union rules shows the entire inversion of the purpose of schools — that schools are places of employment for teachers rather than places of education for children.
There’s a growing segment of the RV world – young families – mom and dad and one or two or ten kidlets – traveling around in their nice RV, mom and/or dad working from home (WFRV?) and homeschooling their kids.
A month by the Grand Canyon, a month in the Sonoran desert, a month by the Gulf of Mexico, a month in the Tennessee mountains . . . learning about each region in person, all while taking part in one of several curriculum programs set up for such parents.
I was out hiking a few days ago, and ran into one group also hiking. We – me and eight 11-12-13 year-olds – ended up in a discussion about alluvial fans, desert varnish, and basin-and-range topology.
These kids are going to be SO much better off in life as a result of their upbringing.
Stuart Noyes – I can not argue with your personal experience. But I do not believe that such behaviour is typical.
Let us hope not – as state education is, tragically, being corrupted by the policy of the Labour government (doing the things that officials and “experts” have long wanted to do), and many of the private schools are also “Woke” (with parents spending money they can ill afford – only to find out, too late, that their children have been filled with evil doctrines, filled with hatred for all their parents hold dear).
So Home Schooling may become the only-game-in-town.