Homeschooling

Economics Political Theory
1

Two questions, the first to everyone in general, and the seconds to parents who have homeschooled their kids (or people who know parents who have homeschooled their kids).

  1. My career I’m heading towards will be extremely busy, and, assuming for now that I don’t get married / have a ‘significant other’ in the house, are there teachers available who teach the homeschooled kids while the parents are at work or something? If so, how does it work for high school when you’re learning higher-level sciences? Are the teachers expected to know everything subject equally?

  2. Assuming the answer the question 1 is ‘yes’, have you found it important that the parents do the homeschooling? I don’t know if the relationship between parent-child should be mixed with teacher-student, or if that’s a good thing.

2

Hi Brian,

I don’t have personal experience of homeschooling, but since I became familiar with unschooling I have become an advocate of that. David Friedman was unschooled and he unschooled his children: here he talks to Stefan Molyneux about it.

The key idea is that children should direct their own education, choosing their own teachers. They will find out how they learn best, because they have a natural curiosity and desire to learn. Too often, this passion for learning is stamped out of them by being taught things they don’t want to learn, and coming to see learning as a passive, dull process, which is directed by somebody else, not by them. The directing could come from a state school, a private school, a private tutor, or their parents.

The proper role of the parent is to facilitate learning, primarily through imparting on their children how to teach themselves, or how to find teachers and resources. A young child may ask their parents ‘how does a car work?’ or ‘when did dinosaurs walk the earth?’ or ‘what makes trees grow?’. Can you answer these simple questions in any kind of depth, without googling them, or asking someone, or going to a library to read up on them? If you honestly answer ‘I don’t know; but I know how to find out,’ and then explore the answers to those questions along with your children, they will soon be teaching themselves things without your assistance. When they get a bit older and start to explore higher-level science, they may want to take some formal education, perhaps a university or specialist private school or private tutor, and if they do they should be encouraged.

So to answer your questions, there is no need to hire a private tutor, and doing so may even harm the child’s ability and desire to learn. And there is no need for a parent to be all-wise, able to answer any question; they must only know how to find out the answers, and enthusiastically encourage their children to seek out the answers.

3

Brian,

I’m new to the forums. But, my wife and I homeschool our four children. I should say, I work and my wife homeschools our children. The first thing to understand is that there are MANY sources of help for homeschoolers. I would recommend you visit a homeschool convention in your area. It is a mis-conception that the parent must first be an expert (or even close to an expert) on the subject being studied. Most, if not all, of the curricula walk the teacher and student through everything in a step by step manner. This includes everything up to and including what people consider higher level sciences. You will probably learn more than your child. One thing to consider in evaluating the effectivness of homeschooling is the change in the way colleges are treating prospective students who were homeschooled compared to just a few years ago. The truth is that homeschoolers run rings around publically educated students (in most cases… obviously there are exceptions).

As for your question of if it is important for the parent to be the one actually teaching… Again, the curricula do the teaching. The parent is there mostly as a coach/manager. But, there are other ways to supplement their education. For example, we take our kids to something called “Friday School”. It is a group organized by local homeschooling parents that employ teachers for a series of classes for just Fridays. There are probably 120 students that attend. My twelve year old son, for example is taking a class on the history of war and another on electronic circuitry. One of my daughters is in a dance class and another in a political science course. After the first time they visited Friday School, they all told me things like, “DAD… that was the BEST school day, ever.” By the way, they were in public school up until last year. That was the first time I heard anything remotely close to that.

And to address your last question: I don’t know how it would even be possible for a parent-child relationship to not be “teacher-student”.

Hope this helps.
~Jon

4

I am skeptical about homeschooling (unless professional teachers do that), but I really like the idea of unschooling. It’s actually the best parents can do to their child, in my opinion.

5

Excellent post.

6

I was homeschooled by my mother. I thank God for that.

The most important thing that my mother taught me was to learn. Not memorize the periodic table, or be able to decipher Shakespeare. She taught me to look at the world objectively and critically.

If it wasn’t for that, I’d be a war-mongering Republican signing up for sniper school right now. I guarantee it. She didn’t force feed me libertarian principles, and she sure didn’t advocate anarchy. If I wanted to become a Marine sniper, she would have stood behind me. This solidifies the fact that what she taught me was of much greater value than what you’ll find in your average highschool textbook. She taught me… to think for myself, and taught me how to find the truth on my own, rather than taking whatever comes out of an instructors mouth and filing it in my brain under the truth section. With a new-found ability to learn and a connection to the internet… well, you see where that can lead.

My mom is not an expert in every field that is considered a ‘basic’, but because of my parents taking me out of the public school system, I am the person I am today. I shutter to think who I’d be were it not for that.

Lectures from ‘experts’ are not the most critical ingredient in a good education.

The past few years, starting in highschool, I began taking college classes. Not a single basic, though, bar one that was relevant to the field I’m interested in making a living in. Our education system, entirely, is rather absurd. These ‘core’ courses, and these ‘degrees’. Their actual relation to a person’s thinking skills and knowledge is generally zilch. Sure, smart people usually pursue degrees, but it isn’t getting a degree that makes them smart. The market’s unfounded faith in the degree is why smart people get them. They are a tool to get a particular job with a particular salary, not much more. Everything you learn can be learned outside the pursuit of a degree, and it’s common for a degree holder to have learned next to nothing.

Now, I’m not the smartest person on the planet, but I think it would be pretty absurd to say that my mother’s lack of expertise in these basic fields really degraded from my education, especially compared to the other options available.

I suppose that’s my 2kb worth.

7

Ever since I was a child, I knew that I would be interested in earning a living, or at least having a very high level of understanding in maths/science.

I f***ing hate Shakespeare and english teachers. That was the MOST USELESS torture I’ve had to go through in my schooling career. Some guy from 400 years ago wrote plays. Why the hell should I care?

Way to waste months of my life, English class.

8

THIS.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I basically “unschooled” myself all the while I was forced to endure public schooling. Looking back, nearly all of public school and even some parts of college were a huge waste of my time. Fortunately, I somehow kept enough critical-thinking ability to realize that learning doesn’t have to be like this, so I still enjoyed learning about things I was interested in.

Edit: I most definitely plan on “unschooling” my own children.

9

I quite like literature.

I also unschooled myself. It helped having parents who were too busy to keep me in the system.

10

And that’s the point when we talk about public gulags (aka schools). Schools don’t care what this or that children prefer, they just force them to “learn” all the same information. This is madness. I can’t believe any public education advocate (out there) doesn’t see this major flaw.

It’s like forcing all children wear the same size shoes.

11

Some people support public schooling out of the idea that children should be exposed to as much as possible before they can make a “fully-informed decision” as to what kind of career they want to pursue. Others want to make sure (to the fullest extent possible or economical) that children grow up to become “well-rounded citizens” because, presumably, they will then make “rational decisions” when it comes to politics. Still others support public schooling as a way to mitigate or even prevent parental and/or societal neglect. By “societal neglect”, I mean “negative influences” that may be present in society, such as “sinful” activities and the “temptation” to behave criminally.

When you get down to it, the justifications for public schooling are less about education and more about social goals such as more opportunities, greater equality of opportunity, protection against political adversity (i.e. “people who are educated will vote the same way I do”), and protection against crime and “sin”.

12

Teach your children HOW to think, and they will discover on their own WHAT to think. Basic reading skills, narrative history and mathematical principles are really all you need early on. Then just turn them loose in the library, so to speak, and be there as a mentor when they have questions (or have someone else they can go to when they have a question you can’t answer). Figure out what they want to learn, and help them find the resources. Help them find out what they want to do with their life, and guide them into fields of study that will lend themselves to that.

Of course, each child is different. Some may require practically no guidance at all; some will need constant tutoring. But the idea of “education” as cramming a curriculum into a child’s head is downright barbaric, and will have to end before we progress any further as a civilization.

13

I’d consider the principles of logic to be more important than narrative history, but that’s just me.

14

You’re right; I should have included that. I included narrative history because teaching history as a story is a good way to make sure a kid wants to read more of it. I like Dan Carlin’s approach, and I would love to use his podcasts as a learning resource.

15

It’s for some people, not for others. It’s just another point of frustration with me when it comes to “one size fits all” public schooling.

16

not to hijack the thread, but a q for those unschooled. Aren’t there truancy laws?

17

Everyone, thank you very much for the posts.

Yeah, there are. At least in my state I know there are. I think here you have to go to compulsory school until 16. And the homeschools have to meet the standard, whether state or federal I’m not sure. All I know is that I’ve learned more in the year barely every going to my college classes and studying different stuff alone than I’ve learned through high school.

18

There are truancy laws, but they don’t apply to registered homeschoolers. The trick seems to be finding a way to fulfill the state’s curriculum requirements and still have time for actual learning.

19

I can’t edit my previous post, but David Friedman has since informed me that it is not accurate of me to say that he was unschooled. He does however recognize that large parts of his education came from other places - like reading books and arguing with people - and he has confirmed that two of his children were unschooled.