askchapo

We are looking at democratic schools after reading Free To Learn by Peter Grey, which is a great book. My wife and I both have graduate degrees in education, so have lots of thoughts on the matter. Like you mention, I’m especially turned off by how focused teachers now are on coercing kids into being quiet & compliant so they can hack through mandatory curriculum.

Here in the US (and I guess internationally), the Sudberry Valley School is the big dog - not sure why the Summerhill school didn’t pick up more steam in this regard - but I’m more swayed by some other methods of democratic schooling that allow students to choose topics of interest and collaborate with a tutor around that topic or theme. (Big fan of Rousseau’s Emile in this regard.)

I’m highly skeptical of home schooling because of the risk of isolation and siloing, thought think it could be wonderful with enough community buyin.

Dunno…happy to write quite a bit more about all of this when not on my phone. Do you mind if I cross post to c/parents

I was home-schooled and imo it should be illegal. It's a terrible environment to grow up in and socially stunts people for life, please do not home school your kid(s)

I was homeschooled for several years, and I completely agree with PeeNutButtHer, it should be illegal. Except for particular circumstances with a limited timeframe, I think it’s abusive.

Honestly the education part isn’t even the issue. It’s the socializing. Public school forces you to be around hundreds of kids your own age every day for several hours and that’s incredibly important. And it’s important that they be away from their parents for that time.

No matter what you do, no amount of extracurricular or homeschool specific activities will make up for the amount of socializing you have to do in school. I joined public school halfway through high school because i was so lonely and depressed, and while it was the best decision i ever made, i basically had to force myself to learn how to talk to people at 16.

Do not homeschool your children.

Without access to good curricula and pedagogical theory, it will be difficult to prepare enough material for a substantive education. Teachers benefit from institutional support, communities of knowledge, and (however bad or politically dodgy) pre-made curricula. You'll have the benefit of working 1 on 1 but finding the time to consistently research and prepare material will probably be exhausting.

Also, children's brains grow and develop so quickly. One of the benefits teachers have is getting to teach the same age or age range consistently so they are able to adapt their methods to be developmentally appropriate. Working with your child year after year, you don't get the same clarity on development.

But traditional schools are sort of inherently violent. I'm an early elementary teacher in a public school in the US.

any homeschooled child will turn out to be some kind of a goddamn freak

any regular school child will also turn out to be some other kind of a goddamn freak

No thoughts just questions...

1. Do you know what you're doing?

2. Do you have a goal in mind when trying to home school your children?

3. Are you a part of a home schooling group or going it alone?

4. What do your children want?

We homeschooled our kids and, now that they're older, I still think it was the right call. We had had them in a private school (which I recognize is a privileged thing to be able to do, and both sets of grandparents were helping pay for it.) Then we moved to place where there was only one school, and it was terrible. We gave it a semester.

We were able to join an organization that provided funding, so we were able to get a full curriculum, and assigned a licensed teacher to each family who provided guidance and was available to answer questions. We were also able to keep the kids in the after school group at the local school and let them go to riding lessons (again, privileged. The homeschool group paid for it as physical education.)

We've since moved again and the kids are in public high school here.

So I guess my advice is: Look at the specific schools available to you, they might not be that bad. Prioritize your kid(s) spending time with other kids, out of your house. And be realistic about whether you can afford the curriculum. It takes a lot of time to learn about what's available, make your choices, and then pivot if something isn't working for your kid... I personally would say it's only worth doing if the publicly available options are truly unacceptable and you have plenty of time and money and community resources and activities to put in to it.

Honestly, I see a lot of good that came from homeschooling, but I couldn't do it now that the economy has changed and I've had to go back to work.

I went to Montessori breifly, at about four years old. For some reason they decided my motor skills weren't good enough so I got singled out to do nothing but sort buttons all day. When I cried about it I just got told to learn to cry quietly, then sat down for half an hour and told 'no, you had a good day' before being picked up. 0/10 do not recommend.

I can see a lot of the discussion is about homeschooling which is totally fine. I'd love to hear about experiences as a parent or student at alternative (eg. democratic/montessori) schools too because a lot of the critique about traditional schooling acknowledges how important socialising is, which is definitely a downside of many homeschooling setups.