Individual learning?Homeschooling

[Pawelk198604]

No it isn't.

In fact, as a moderator who has also been diagnosed with ADHD in the past, trying to use such things as an excuse to justify bad behavior will get you an even harsher lecture than usual. At most that type of disability gives you a slightly different perspective of the world and requires lifestyle changes to manage it, it does not prevent you from living an otherwise ordinary life and having otherwise ordinary interactions with the world. With practice you can use it as a tool to create some unique out of the box thinking, but it should not ever be allowed to define you as a person.

However there are some advantages to home schooling, as well as a major disadvantage in that you miss out on social skills that are difficult to learn later in life. The thread has discussion value because of that, and if people stay civilized about the topic at hand and refrain from drifting to politics or discrimination we can indeed talk about it.

Thanks, believe me i would glad to go to school with rest of children, but back than i had other health problem even my supposed ADHD was later turn to be Asperger.

My behavior improved greatly when i turned 10.

EDIT. No i'm not proud of my misbehavior, but was some funny moment, when When turned attention to the teacher about one of her loose boob, I had no intention to offend, I just did not know that certain topics are not allowed:D

It was the same with a nun. she tell that above us is heaven, i replay that not heaven but space, she probably thought that my parents are atheists:D

Edited November 29, 2013 by Pawelk198604

[satcharna]

Homeschooling still isn't a solution. The problem many autists face in society is that they do not understand how people without autism think and react, a perfect example of which is you talking to your teacher about her breasts. The solution isn't the seclusion of homeschooling, it's exposure to other people and therapy sessions to let such a child learn how to behave with other people. The result is that autistic children would learn how to not make other people uncomfortable, and in addition make them more comfortable with social situations themselves.

I'm also Polish, and I'm sad that homeschooling is still a thing. The social aspects of ordinary school, even though not always pleasant, are an important part of growing up, and a part that homeschooled children never get to experience. Still, I'm glad to hear things are going well for you now, and that you're studying at university. Too few young people see the value of education.

[hawkinator]

My long history of schooling: (note that the following is my history. I'm not necessarily proud or ashamed of it, but it's what happened [or as best as I can remember])

I started out (as far as I can remember, it's hard to be sure when your best source is your six year old self) going to a private school that used a weird system called the Montessori method. Essentially, kids were allowed to sort of pick learning activities and learn at their own pace. It was structured completely differently than any sort of school I've ever seen before or since. (this was approximately kindergarten thru first grade, although it's a bit fuzzy, both because of my lack of memory of it and because of the weirdness of the system)

Next up, I started going to good 'ole fashioned American public school (in second grade, I think). I remember being light-years ahead of most of my classmates in a lot of subjects, and slightly behind in others. I also remember this being the most miserable time for me emotionally (largely due to a lot of other factors in my life at the time.)

After that I went to a Christian private school. Naturally, we were all taught the Bible and that evolution was a big fat lie, but mostly we learned about how to do math, write proper sentences, histories of people in far away places (which bored us), the history of how our nation became [sarcasm] the greatest in the WORLD!! [/sarcasm] (which we enjoyed), and how cells work and plant reproduce and the like. In other words, we learned what other kids were learning, plus the Bible, minus evolution (well, we were taught about evolution, mostly how big of a lie it was). Of note here is that while we always heard about how "schools around the county had such terrible bullying problems", we didn't have any. Like, none. Pretty much all the time, we just got along. There were, I think, two reasons for this, one being that there were so very few of us to begin with (I think there were about five people in my grade, although we shared a classroom with two other grades), and the other was that that meant that the staff were able to much more effectively deal with problems that arose. Oh, and we got spankings, I mean actual physical spankings that hurt, when we did something bad enough (they had to have forms signed by the parents to do this. In my family, the rule was that if you got one at school, you were going to get another one at home. So, yeah...) I went here from about the second half of second grade thru fourth grade.

Then, I was home-schooled for fifth and sixth grade. Not much to report here, except that I was really lonely. Also, I did a lot of goofing off and got all those weird looks at the supermarket that everybody talks about.

After that I went to a different Christian school. This one was a lot like the other one except for a few differences. It was slightly bigger. It had closer ties to it's associated church, but wasn't any more or less religiously focused. It was structured more like a traditional school, whereas the other one had a "learning center" structure. I attended seventh thru twelfth grade here and learned [opinion]that you don't have to completely give up on religion to be a scientist[/opinion]

This is my true story. My personal opinions are labeled as such, the opinions of those who have taught me are labeled as such, and I hope you have found it informative and interesting, and most of all, I dare you to find someone with a more complicated educational background than me. (most people I talk to have done one or two of the schooling types I mention here, but not all of them)

Have a nice day/night!

[p.s. This is kind of something that I have been wanting to get off my chest for a while, so... yeah.]

Edited November 29, 2013 by hawkinator

[Nuke]

you probibly do more damage to the children when you segregate out the ones that dont conform to an established academic standard, then putting them in homeschooling or special education. as opposed to keeping them in with the normal ones. school isnt just about meeting an academic standard, its also about teaching them to interact with the rest of society, and you cant do that if you shelter some of them from the world at large. some people will naturally soak up more knowledge that others, and some considerably less, but we shouldn't segregate them based on that.

homeschooling in itself isn't bad. i have a niece and a nephew that live out in the alaskan bush. and the nearest public school can only be reached by boat. homeschooling is preferable than sending them out on the brutal alaskan water every school day throughout winter to attend class. but these kids will have a very hard time adapting to life outside of their tiny community.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Nuke

[S4qFBxkFFg]

That may well be true and it's certainly an interesting insight, but our demographic circumstances have changed. We're now mostly urbanized, and children having large peer groups is common. Just because something was common in agrarian societies doesn't mean it's applicable or desirable in an urban one.

I was actually referring to pre-agrarian here, but what I should have also said, was that while our lifestyles have changed, has humanity itself changed that much? If humans spent tens of thousands of years adapted to a life (in an evolutionary sense) without any sort of urbanisation, is a few thousand years enough time for adaptation to current lifestyles? Of course, we can live worthwhile lives in the modern world, and there are enormous advantages to it; but there are probably also many problems that our distant ancestors never had to contend with.

My main point is that our brains (especially the developing ones of children) may still be optimised for maintaining relationships with a smaller number of people of varying ages, and not with a large number of (immature) people. It may be presumptuous, but I suspect our mental health could be improved by trying to match our communities more closely with those of ancient humans (while still taking advantage of all the benefits a modern world offers).

I should point out, that conventional schools are only one aspect of modern life you can look at in this way; similar observations could be made about large corporations, or the military.

Edited November 29, 2013 by S4qFBxkFFg
typos

[S4qFBxkFFg]

This is an incredibly important thing that is overlooked by a lot of parents who choose to homeschool their kids. Sure, they might get a slightly higher quality of education at home, but they miss out on the most important aspect of school - social development. You can't survive on your own as an adult if you do not know how to act around other people. After all, you can't be taught those things. You have to learn through experience.

I take your point, but would make a distinction between "other people" and "other children". Learning how to interact with a bunch of kids does not necessarily equip someone to live in the real world.

I'm not necessarily arguing in favour of home-schooling, just that conventional schools are not normal environments - for example, behaviours that would get a person dismissed from a job without notice are seen as expected and almost acceptable in schools.

There may not be an ideal way to educate children, but if I was in charge I'd probably try to integrate it far more with the rest of the world. There should be a place for basic education in the home environment as well. Further one, maybe it would also be valuable to get lessons out of schools and into real-world situations? Imagine being taught arithmetic by accountancy and engineering firms, physical education by professional athletes, languages by professional writers. Would it be so crazy to say that all adults and businesses have a responsibility to teach their skills to children?

[Ralathon]

Further one, maybe it would also be valuable to get lessons out of schools and into real-world situations? Imagine being taught arithmetic by accountancy and engineering firms, physical education by professional athletes, languages by professional writers. Would it be so crazy to say that all adults and businesses have a responsibility to teach their skills to children?

The problem I have with your idea is resource allocation and teaching skill. A good mathematician is not necessarily a good teacher and you don't need a world class mathematician to teach arithmetic. Teaching kids would take away time from their other duties resulting in reduced production of useful goods with relatively little benefit for the children compared to a dedicated teacher.

I don't know how this stuff is handled in the rest of the world, but in my country people often have to follow an internship during higher education. So they learn the basics from general teachers and then the details from a real world environment. The basic education could use some work but the structure seems okay to me.

In my opinion, the main thing missing from basic education is a lack of purpose. They tell you how to learn maths but they don't tell you why you need them. If I was in charge of the educational system I'd focus on answering the 'why' question.

What I think is a good way to do this, is to outsource work from the business sector to the schools. Not complex things, but low priority tasks like "Translate this document to french for our business partner", "Make a poster for our latest product." or "Calculate the error margin for these measurements". The school wouldn't ask for any money, but they would reserve all rights to refuse a job if it wasn't educational in their eyes. Then the kids would try to solve the problem under the supervision of the teacher. With about half of the classes focused on problem solving and the other half on classical lessons to cover material needed for the next job (with context provided), or to fill gaps in subjects for which no job is available.

On one hand this would give people a purpose to do something: "I need to know how probability works because company X is counting on me to calculate Y!" and on the other hand it gives the business sector some extra publicity, good PR and they can reduce workload.

The main problem I see in this scheme is finding the right kind of exercises. A lot of jobs are either utterly menial and therefore best solved with computers or are so intensive that they are far outside the ability of a kid to solve. Not to mention that companies are often secretive about their inner workings due to competition. Maybe some kind of open source data bank that any school and company can access could provide enough interesting work though.

[Seret]

My main point is that our brains (especially the developing ones of children) may still be optimised for maintaining relationships with a smaller number of people of varying ages, and not with a large number of (immature) people. It may be presumptuous, but I suspect our mental health could be improved by trying to match our communities more closely with those of ancient humans (while still taking advantage of all the benefits a modern world offers).

Research suggest the maximum (and indeed optimum) social group size is about 100 people. Anthropologists find society organising itself into units about this size way, way back in time, and people still organise into a social group about that size now. It's interesting to note that the typical person on Facebook has about that many connections. I suspect that you're completely right, and that our evolutionary hardwiring is largely the same as it was 10,000 or 100,000 years ago. However I think humans are adaptable enough that we can make that wiring work effectively in the modern world. I think we self-organise into social frameworks that we find work for us.

[tom1499]

We used to have some friends that home schooled, infact they where the one of the reasons we started it(that and money was low and public schools had a horrifically low education standard, and they were in a foreign language) but they where quite the weirdos. They were harmless, but very hippy-ish, nothing wrong with that, but you could tell that their kids had been home-schooled their whole life. Me and my sister are quite fortunate in that we started around 10 and 9 respectively. Since then we have stayed at Scouts and that's given us some social aspects. Almost since we started my sister has gone through lapses of wanting to go back, for friends really, although she had many from scouts, but has now gotten to the typical phase of 'hating people' and prefers to sit on her laptop to going to meet friends. Fortunately we've been quite a calm and close-knit family before we started homeschooling so it hasn't affected us as much as I think it would some.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

This is an incredibly important thing that is overlooked by a lot of parents who choose to homeschool their kids. Sure, they might get a slightly higher quality of education at home, but they miss out on the most important aspect of school - social development. You can't survive on your own as an adult if you do not know how to act around other people. After all, you can't be taught those things. You have to learn through experience.

That's what other activities/sports are for, as has been already said.

[Killerdude8]

Homeschooling is at your own pace, At least where I live it is, So, you could be done and graduated in a matter of months if you're dedicated enough, Or it may take years.

I quite like that model, Learn in a way that suits you best.