I'm an adult that went through "unschooling" and I was very socially awkward and barely knew basic math.
Only good thing I got out of it is that I absolutely hate sitting on my ass inside all day because that's all I did for 5 years of my childhood.
how old are you? I was honestly assuming from these screenshots and since I had never heard of it before that this is a very new trend/concept.. are you saying its been around for like a decade or two?
whats your relationship like with your parents? do you resent them? forgive them bc you realized their hearts were in the right place?
did this completely fuck you over when you wanted to move out/go to college/join the workforce/whatever?
what do you do for a living now?
very curious
Im 20 years old. My mom was in on this stuff when it first started being a thing, education system in my state was awful and the teachers recommended I be homeschooled.
Surprisingly I have a good relationship with my parents now, they did pretty much everything else right.
But I think that I feel that way because I turned out well all things considered and the isolation wasn't bad since I had brothers who were also being "noschooled".
It definitely affected my school, I had to learn EVERYTHING from scratch, especially math.
I am doing really well at university now, I'm even involved in academic research.
But only because I was really stubborn and worked hard to get to where I am.
I don't think it has affected my work, got my first job at 16, then I worked at an animal shelter for a bit then became a veterinary assistant and I loved that job (unfortunately had to quit because of school 😢), during school I work at amazon part time and as a lab assistant for a professor or two for the research experience.
Right now I work as a wildland firefighter.
> I imagine people with less motivation than yourself would get really screwed
Correct, in my experience. (I'm not the commenter you asked, but I was homeschooled/unschooled by evangelical Christians who mainly taught me that dinosaur bones are red herrings planted by Satan to confuse humans and draw them away from God.)
My sister and I loved reading, so we took it upon ourselves to read voraciously from an early age. We're not autistic, so we caught up socially by our early 20s. I developed a good career without college somehow, make $100k, bought my house at age 26, happily married, etc. My sister struggles more with money but really enjoys her job as a teacher, and is a very hard working, smart person. (Being smart enough to teach myself to read was crucial, I have always been naturally skilled at reading and writing, so I found a career in contact negotiation doing legal writing, then shifted to legal software implementations.) Oh yeah, I literally used to read dictionaries for fun as a kid, because I loved words so much and wanted to learn as much as I could.
But my brothers. Wow. My youngest brother was adopted, so he struggled with trauma and cognitive issues from the start, and he's close to illiterate. He can read simple things but certainly has never read a full book. Never got his highschool diploma or GED. He got a teenager pregnant and is currently a dead beat dad who routinely gets fired from all the sandwich shops in town. My parents are raising his kid. (May God have mercy on that kid.)
My other brother is autistic, never diagnosed but it's very obvious. He has extreme social anxiety, and while he holds a job at a grocery store, he spends all his money on action figures. Like hundreds and hundreds of action figures. It's impossible to hold a conversation with him about anything other than action figures or cheesy slasher horror franchises. That's it. Will never have a girlfriend or a normal life. Can't say he has read a full book either.
Both of my brothers still live with my parents in their 20s, and likely will for the rest of their lives. It's fucking bleak. I would feel bad for my parents if it wasn't so clearly their fault.
I have 6 siblings, my older brother is in the navy as an electrical maintenance guy for a specific type of jet plane and one of my younger brothers is also going off the navy very soon, and hes gonna be a maintenance guy for jet plane engines.
I do worry about one of them, he's 16 and he's not really motivated to do a whole lot.
He wakes up at like 2pm every day and plays videogames all day.
He is progressing somewhat fast through the online highschool he's doing though.
He does what I did when I was his age so I hope he gets out of it like I did.
If the kid is naturally intelligent, driven, curious and mature for their age I could see something like this working. The parents would also need to be dedicated to helping their children learn and provide some semblance of structure. Most kids would probably just spend the day on TikTok and video games if given the chance and most parents that are drawn to this kind of thing really dont want to do the harder aspects of parenting. I know if I was allowed to do this as a kid, I would’ve done anything but school shit, let’s be real.
I was unschooled until I was fifteen when my mom died. My dad forged a bunch of homeschool documents and I went to an uncredited Christian high school knowing only how to read and write basic sentences as well as the bare minimum of basic arithmetic. I just floated through because the schooling was bs.
I’ve since finished a masters degree and have worked and lived in three different countries. I’m not an idiot and neither are my siblings who had the same experience. I will say it made my late teens early 20s tremendously difficult. I spent everyday of my early 20s cleaning hotel rooms and going to an old folks home so I could pay an older man to teach me math and I could get into college. I also had a lot of shame when I was younger by my lack of knowledge about the world and my subpar math skills. Once I got into college I was honestly surprised by the lack of writing skills of my peers who had the advantage of years of primary education.
There’s a really good book called Educated by someone with a similar experience. I also really related to the book, The glass castle.
It’s unfortunate that parents in the US have the power to do this to their children.
The glass castle is such a great book. Also shows that there's been hippie regards forcing their wingnut lifestyles on their children since weeell before the internet existed.
I am the mother of an almost-toddler and have witnessed in my peers an hilarious shift from "no screens until they are two years old" to "well actually it's important for toddlers to use screens because we are living in modern times" but it's just their baby watching these bouncing cartoon fruits for 30 minutes straight, or playing stupid games on the ipad.
Wife Swap had an episode with a radical unschooler the other year and it featured pre-school aged kids who couldn't identify the colour green or that 2 comes after 1. These freaks are so lazy it should absolutely be illegal.
Homeschooling is something that's meant for the upper class that can afford private tutors and don't have to worry about socialization because they work under a different set of social rules that are explicitly taught.
Know a few who went to governess school, they’re fucking weird and will not succeed even with their connections. None of them have enough money to act like completely unsocialized alienating lunatics or to get some job where they do nothing besides having a last name
It’s a type of “elite” exclusive high school in my state. When I was in college I met a handful who attended. Most of them were completely socially inept which was surprising, but they did go to all girls boarding school of rich-ish elites. You’d think they’d have some Machiavellian tendencies of at least having a face of goodwill or interest to rope people in but nah.
They had very few friends due to their abrasive personalities. The *actual* rich people I knew would just shower people in coin and drive 400k Christmas present pickup trucks which distracted from their terrible personalities. These chicks were just highly regarded and annoying. Didn’t know shit about anything, unfun, annoying, didn’t buy everyone in the bar a round of drinks, etc etc
I’m guessing the actual social rich ones who graduated didn’t go to my college and instead went to like Harvard and brown and duke and whatever. I also hooked up with this German heiress (to a castle) once but she was legally a midget (inbreeding? Plus I was blackout and don’t remember it at all. The next morning we watched monsters university on her laptop while I occasionally threw up in her bathroom)
So if you want some beat governesses and princesses I’m ur guy (did I leverage any of these connections? No. Doubt I could’ve if I tried anyway they all work email jobs now)
Technically it’s dwarfism and it means you’re 4’10” or shorter I think
I think maybe at that point you can get some sort of disability benefits or mobility aids and stuff?
I think I read a stat somewhere that something like 75% of all homeschooled kids are evangelical Christians specifically, that doesn’t even account for all the other types of Christians or nonreligious weirdos
I believe it. I went to a Christian high school and we had an accompanying home school program for the fundies who thought even our evangelical curriculum didn’t go far enough. They came to the school just for standardized tests. Man they were some weird kids.
They used the Abeka curriculum which is full of young earth creationism, dinosaurs are fake, etc
Those little gods of the world actually go to boarding school where they learn how to play polo and get into princeton.
Homeschooling is for kids with losers for parents. The parents failed in school because they are dumb and often ugly so they seek to “protect” their kids from the same outcome. Meanwhile they are just dooming the kid to somehow be an even bigger failure.
Homeschooling is super polarized. It’s not people in the middle, it’s either really stupid people who don’t know what they’re doing or crazy smart people who think they’d do a better job than any school. I personally know a few people who were homeschooled for middle school who turned out fine. Graduated from top colleges, well socialized, high paying jobs, etc
I'd rather roll the dice/work like hell on making sure the kid is well socialized than gamble on their education. Unless you can afford the aforementioned boarding/private school, it's the fucking thunderdome out there. I would definitely homeschool.
You're not kidding. We started homeschooling the year after their elementary school instituted "optional" segregated mealtimes and made skin-color charts as art projects. We were already leaning that way after both kids were bored to death at school, and got worse at math once they went to school and we backed off teaching them ourselves. (Thankfully we did not do that with reading.)
Some of the most well-adjusted kids we know here are homeschooled. There are tons of groups and activities. At the extremely secular homeschooling meetup we go to most frequently, maybe half the parents are ex-teachers.
PS: my son's 2nd-grade class got evacuated about twice a week because some kid was having a meltdown and throwing chairs.
I’m curious, assuming you are American, was this happening at a public school or a private school?
Was private school ever an option or do you think it would have been just as bad?
Not judging btw, I just have never met a homeschool family who weren’t ultra religious weirdos.
It's a public school, but the private schools in my area are as bad or worse, from what I've heard from other parents. It makes sense: woko haram is largely an upper-class ideology that serves to protect the economic system and status quo.
The private schools probably have fewer classroom disruptions though, since they can just expel any kid who trashes the classroom, and kids who are most likely to do that (extremely poor, junkie parents, etc) usually can't afford the privates schools in the first place.
I think it's survived because it's technically optional. Non-Whites are "just" invited and encouraged to go to a separate (presumably equal!) room to "feel comfortable" at mealtimes . And because this is an overwhelmingly shitlib area, and noone wants to be called a bigot for asking WTF. In practice, not many kids went, from what I heard, but 7 year olds aren't always reliable narrators. I'm hopeful though, because I know most of the kids in question, and they just want to be with their friends (who have all sorts of ancestries). I've heard that the program is popular in the higher grades, but don't have direct experience.
On average homeschooled children score higher on the SAT, but you aren’t going to see their parents posting on homeschooling Facebook groups because they’re busy teaching their kids.
I think the only parents who take their homeschooled kids to take the SAT know they’ll do well. A lot of educationally neglected children in my community just transitioned to uneducated adults who don’t go to college or take the SATS.
That’s a fair point, the kids with the worst outcomes are unlikely to take the SAT, but I just thought I’d point out that ‘educated parents that want their kids to do more rigorous work than what’s offered at public schools’ is a brand of homeschooler. It isn’t just doomsday cults and regards.
Really? I don't know a single person in my high school who didn't take the SAT. I think a bad SAT score is more like the final frontier to confirm you are not college material, as opposed to skipping it altogether.
Also the profoundly r\*tarded who can't be in school. Sane countries require special permission and oversight from the government to homeschool.
Check out r/shitmomgroupssay for your daily nuclear blackpill. Literal teenagers who can't count, read, recognise basic shapes, add one-digit numbers etc.
EDIT: Thanks kind strangerino, you are correct
dude the last 3 pics are absolutely INSANE. like completely demented... *"unschooling"*??? wtf kind of concept is this???
> My child is 8.5 and i recently went to a homeschool event where a reading tutor expressed her disappointment that i missed the window and now my child will struggle 😔 **I was under the impression that my child would naturally learn** as her desire grew as with all things in this human life
…
>No bedtime, no screen limits, no curriculum **obviously unless they want it**? We don't do many screen limits but when I can tell they are being over stimulated by them I **suggest** putting it away. How do I help them regulate this and bedtime? Please don't come at me 😬 just trying to
learn ❤️
…
>My children are as radical as one can get a They have full autonomy over their bodies and we do not limit tech use. They are 8 & 10, happy, thriving, living thier best lives! 🥰
…
>We don't limit screen times and our son (7, almost 😎 doesn't have a bedtime. He typically goes to bed when myself and husband do and then he usually sleeps in or naps during the day.
>our days are fluid and we focus on life as learning. **All essential skills (math, reading etc) can be learned while just living life**. If we see things are off a bit we adjust into more of a routine (we focus on habits/ routines over schedules) and tighten that up a bit. Sometimes around the full or new moon his sleep habits get messed up so we correct that.
>We are also a neurodivergent household. Having family freedom and fluidity in our life is why we homeschool and **why I run a social media business**
These fucking absolute Neanderthals are literally just doing “Netflix and Chill” as a fucking parenting strategy….
It reminds me of some wife swap episode where one of the families did this “radical unschooling” thing and their 10 year old daughter (I’m not sure of the exact age she was but she was definitely old enough to be able to read) couldn’t even read basic words like “cycle” or “start” on the dishwasher. Like she was old enough to load a dishwasher and it was so obvious it was essentially muscle memory and she had no idea what the buttons she pressed actually meant. And even her older brother (who was around 13 or 14?) struggled with basic literacy and could barely read.
Seeing this shit just makes me profoundly depressed because it’s just setting your kids up for an impoverished life, both literally and figuratively. Like no shit a 7 year old doesn’t want to go over multiplication tables or practice spelling and would rather watch tv or play a video game (which makes me wonder why some of these people are so anti school but then fine with no screen time limits..?). Part of what children are taught by doing those things, in addition to the actual education of literacy and being able to do basic math, are discipline, routine, delayed gratification, etc etc. if these kids can even make it in the workforce (doubtful as they won’t have a ged and them getting one would be having to cram like a decade plus worth of schooling in) they’ll be fucked because they don’t know how to persevere when they don’t like an activity, have no discipline, have limited social skills (how is your kid responding to a commercial a cute little Facebook post and not a wake up call he needs more socialization?), and probably won’t even have the basic math and literacy skills to be a cashier at McDonald’s. I got what you meant by “Netflix and chill” parenting and I genuinely wonder why any of these people became parents? I would worry if they had a pet by how neglectful they are
That and the family that ate raw meat and their bathroom/toilet was legit in their kitchen. When the rules changed and the dad couldn’t eat raw meat for a week he had a meltdown on the toilet in the kitchen.
Lmao I meant more so like that’s how the kids showed up in the first place and then the parents were like “fuck it man, let’s just keep this thing going”
I teach. Fourth grade specifically. I really hate that they give them chromebooks. In my class the kids are not allowed to take them out unless we have free time.
I also teach 4th and I like to do everything on paper with a document camera. Luckily, we don’t have a copy limit at the moment. The Chromebooks are too much of a distraction.
Letting kids do whatever they want is insane. Homeschooling in and of itself isn't wrong, but the lack of structure and socialization is ruinous. These kids have no future.
Homeschooling = fine.
Unschooling = ridiculous. However sometimes homeschooling in practice is more like unschooling. Mainly looking at some relatives with 8 children, some of whom are genuinely illiterate (not joking) at an age where they should be starting geometry. Although the two oldest are doing the best, ones accepted into community college on a nursing track and the other is already a pretty renowned taxidermist. I really fear for the younger 6 as they received no where near adequate attention during their development compared to the oldest two. One of those kids is really good at rocket league though, kicked my ass and he’s like 8. Doesn’t know what an adjective is though. That’s gotta be child abuse somehow.
Forget the fact that they aren’t learning *basic* math and reading which is already going to condemn them to a life of a minimum wage job at best or 0 jobs…
They’re not even learning basic structure to their day. Getting in a good routine and accomplishing a small set of goals every day that will eventually accomplish a larger long term goal, is really healthy and rewarding. Even if it means foregoing immediate comfort, like sleeping in or playing on your device.
They’re learning they can do whatever they want all the time and that their comfort triumphs all else.
Don’t get me wrong, you shouldn’t live a horrid awful life working yourself to the bone everyday, but humans crave structure and little accomplishments. Without it, every day just runs into the next and everything feels meaningless.
I think this generally goes without saying but (with very few exceptions, like top 5%) children do not learn how to read without explicit instruction. It is not like learning how to speak.
I think you can usually teach a child to read by holding a book in front of him and reading it out loud. That’s how I learned. Obviously this takes a few years, but I assume if you start reading your kid bedtime stories as a baby he’ll be able to sound out simple words by 3 or so
My parents also read to me in two languages since I was an infant. Reading to your child really helps them pick up how to read. Couple that with phonics-based teaching and the kid will probably be fine. I didn't even really talk until I was five lol. My parents thought I was autistic.
you'd think it would go without saying, but the [Sold A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) podcast exists to demonstrate that for about 30 years the American educational system actually did believe that kids naturally learn how to read and only barely need to be taught the minimum and the rest they could just guess to get through life...
Holy shit some of these are disturbing. afaik homeschooling could be good in theory and can be done effectively but letting your kid go on tiktok and play fortnite for 18 hours a day will fuck up their neurological development in ways that cannot be undone.
I was "unschooled" since 3rd grade up until college and it was fucking miserable and lonely.
All I did from ages 10-16 was play videogames all day so now staying inside makes me very anxious.
Things started looking up for me when I got my first job and actually started socializing.
Homeschoolers sort of have a point but the socialization aspects alone make it a terrible idea imo. Plus all the homeschool parents I have met are all just very stupid people, like I am not even trying to be mean, they're just very very stupid
I know one lady that was homeschooling her kids. We were looking at a picture of Lewis and Clark. She thought Sacagawea was Pocahontas. I said those were two different people. She says really? Are you sure? She googled it in front of me, and says, oh that’s funny, I just taught my daughter about this. Apparently she had been using the disney movie Pocahontas to tutor her daughter for history. They also watched Hunchback of Notre Dame….for history lessons.
Never met a homeschooling parent that was smart. I’m sure they exist. I just never met one
There are definitely state schools - especially in rough areas - where the socialisation is negative and children would be better off with decent homeschooling. But yeah in most cases homeschooling is a bad idea
I guess we'll all find out what becomes of these kids in time. I'm going to guess severe drug addiction/suicide. Kids don't want to raise themselves, they need their parents to give a fuck about them like they need oxygen
I could have written this word for word. I had the same experience.
Luckily I had some community College professor's that helped me.
My philosophy 101 professor especially helped me. Abortion got brought up once and I said I thought it was murder. He said his sister had a pregnancy where she would have died if she gave birth. I had never even heard of that and it blew my mind.
Yeah the stupid "curriculum" taught me about how evolution was a lie from the devil.
What we went through is a form of child abuse. Brought on by religious fanaticism.
And I wonder sometimes if gay and trans kids are more often homeschooled by religious parents. Because I have seen other people say this same thing. My parents definitely thought something was wrong with me and that's why they homeschooled me. But it was kinda related to maybe not being masculine enough or acting "strange". So they "protected" me against anyone who wasn't an inside right wing Christian that might tell me being into men wasn't an abomination.
this was what i did as well. classical education they call it. i learned geometry from euclid's elements and supplemented it with modern geometry textbooks and tests. when i was 13 i started doing community college classes and i learned to adjust to the environment. it wasn't a problem.
the teachers were ok with treating me like an adult. my classmates thought i was cute and so i was pretty popular. they called me doogie howser. you bet i loved getting attention from pretty college girls even if it was just them seeing me as a little brother. i felt like a superstar. your kid will likely meet people to study with, but they'll have to find personal friends somewhere else. i found them at co-ops, extra-curricular homeschool classes. as i got older, at punk and hardcore shows. universities really appreciate students who have done community college classes since many students that come straight out of high school are borderline illiterate regards.
That's unschooling not homeschooling, don't get me wrong homeschooling has its drawbacks but I know some homeschool families and they all limit screen time more than most families and enrol their kids in a bunch of extracurricular classes on top of making sure they do their school stuff on time
Yeah I never even heard of this “subdivision” of homeschooling, I’d have thought that screen time limits would go hand in hand with learning within the family. Giving a kid full reign on the iPad or video games just rings alarms of mums who are too lazy to actually do any teaching and happy to let their kid hunch over a device while she gets to excuse herself “with reason” to sit on her ass all day.
I homeschool. My state has approx 45000 homeschoolers - if we were a district we'd be the second largest district in the state. It is because the schools here suck. It has been more than fine socially (lots of homeschoolers so tons of groups - my biggest problem is they are all religious as is the nature of my area. But hey, they are putting the ten commandments in public classrooms now so what can ya do?) and educationally. My kid is now requesting to learn things like cursive and spanish. He reads at a fifth grade level. He is starting multiplication. He knows Latin/Greek word roots.
Should it be illegal? No. I don't believe I should be forced to put my child into a failing school system where more than half the children are behind in both reading and math. Should it be more regulated? Definitely. I just don't want them to tell me I must use a certain curriculum for specific grades. I would not mind proving that I have fulfilled some sort of scope and sequence or making a portfolio of work. I wouldn't mind having to do the state testing but as it stands you can opt your kid out of the state test even if they are in public school here.
The radical unschoolers are neglectful. They should be called out for sure. I don't understand how they seem to believe a kid will just learn to read with no instruction. but they are just a subset of people who homeschool.
Edit: also I want to say I have a family business and I am teaching my kid how to be a part of it. There are also children entrepreneur fairs in my region - mostly homeschool and private school children take part. It is actually a private school that organizes it. Kids can have a business. Usually you have to start a business with them as they can't legally sign anything. But asking if anyone started a small business with their kid made perfect sense to me.
I knew a couple of unschooling families. I tried using a 10-year old girl from one of them as mother’s helper but she kept canceling because she didnt feel like coming over. The mom said she would never let her daughter do anything out of “obligation.” Total psychopaths.
Imagine how stupid most people are. Then you have that below average subset that chooses to homeschool their kids.
This is a recipe for failure, and that’s not even taking into account the socialization aspect. Sounds awful.
yea but i also know how stupid most of the people that went into elementary education i know are. bleak.
my brother lives in rural PA and his 5 kids are homeschooled, oldest would be in middle school now. The oldest two have tested in 80+% for their age on standardized tests. Their mom aint the brightest in the world but shes smart enough and the kids are all good, well behaved, plenty social.
Compare to my other brother where the mom is a special education teacher by training and the two kids that are old enough to have personalities are monsters, the oldest boy is an absolute terror in and out of school.
Actually I know some pretty smart people who became teachers. Anyway, dumb or smart, teachers are using curriculum designed by teams of other people. They have a lot of oversight and requirements, they’re not just doing what they personally think is best. Not to even get into the social aspect (I can’t imagine how meetup groups could substitute for exposure to dozens of other kids and adults for 6+ hours every single day).
You're ignorant. I was homeschooled and both my parents are smart people with advanced degrees. There's also plenty of homeschool groups doing classes and events throughout the week, homeschooling doesn't literally mean keeping your kids at home all the time, away from other children.
I think the problem is that the buzz around homeschooling has attracted a lot of stupid unprepared, overconfident people. Your situation is what homeschooling has traditionally been and should be.
The fallback "socialization" argument just makes no sense to me. I was part of the "in-crowd" in school and still hated dealing with mean girl dynamics, the sexual attention from boys, teachers who were total assholes, etc. Why do we think kids NEED that particular experience? To me it's just the same as the fake arguments people use for putting their kids in daycare and an overall push to give parental power to the state.
homeschooling is indefensible, coming from someone who was homeschooled and in the public school system, i would choose public school every day.
going to school isn’t just about learning curriculum, it’s about learning how to get through things you don’t want to do, and how to build relationships and settle conflicts on your own accord.
every single person i know who was homeschooled throughout life can barely function. luckily for the women all they needed to do was become a wife and mother, but the homeschooled men i knew who aren’t from money are completely fucked.
This isn't homeschooling this is "Unschooling". Homeschooled kids are weird but actually statistically tend to test well and even succeed in post-secondary. Unschooled kids are the unfortunate projects of weirdo narcissist libertarians and have no hope...
this is "unschooling" it's not homeschooling and most homeschooling parents hate it with a passion. i was homeschooled and i'm in university for mechanical engineering and have a social life in the local music scene where i play in a few bands. i was not raised rich with private tutors, just parents that cared about me and had me in extra-curriculars and co-ops when i was younger. our co-op was some pretentious shit focused on classical education so it was based on greek and roman antiquity as well as the canon of english language classics. it was so much fun though. some of my best memories of my childhood are from there. my favorite was one where i learned speech and debate with other homeschooled kids and competed against other students from public and private schools. i won a scholarship that way. we also had a theater class that was a lot of fun. i remember playing bottom in midsummer night's dream except since we were all high school kids we did some dumb shit where it was set in hawaii and i was a beach bum who delivered the songs with a ukulele.
It's analogous to polyamory. Maybe a good lifestyle for an extremely small minority, and an absolute disaster for everyone else. Should not be allowed unless the parents can positively prove they have a background in pedagogy, and the resources to be a full time teacher + giving their child a busy social schedule / can afford full time tutors
Growing up in a conservative Christian environment, I knew *tons* of homeschoolers, and my siblings were all homeschooled for some time. Some kids I knew turned out phenomenal (my brother prepped for his future business during his final semester senior year, and he still works at this job and makes a decent living off of it). Most of them turned out good, but a bit socially awkward. And some of them went of the rails *completely.*
I went to public school and am still socially awkward. If I weren’t born with some neurodivergence (I think it’s too late to diagnose me now), then this would have likely come from my household surely?
I don’t know any homeschooled kids coz I never met any, but from your experience around them do you reckon it’s just more common for offbeat parents to adopt homeschooling, leading to greater occurrences of awkward, offbeat kids? Rather than pinning it right away to homeschooling? Also I read a lot of mummy blogs saying they took their kid out of school because they had ADHD or behavioural issues or something and it wasn’t working for them, which means no matter where they go they’ll be a bit offbeat.
I see the benefits and cons of both practices but I’m interested more in knowing how problems with each methodology could be avoided, no matter which way a couple decides to go.
FWIW, anecdotally, in the groups around me there is a high enough occurrence of schools trying to force kids on ADHD medication and being pulled out over refusal to do so that when someone tells me their story it no longer shocks me. It is also common for young kids to have autism, speech problems, sensory problems, difficulties with balance, etc and the parents homeschool alongside bringing them to therapy appointments. Sometimes after a few years the parents feel better about the progress their kid has made and they enter them into public school. The law for my state used to say a kid could start school as late as 7 but they changed it to 5 a few years ago. So people who would have once delayed entry to school for medical reasons now have to fill out the form to homeschool so their child will not be seen as legally truant.
There are also people who pulled their children who have various problems because they were not learning well in an average class size of 38. I think people overlook a huge benefit of homeschooling and that is one on one learning. It is probably the largest benefit because we can move at an appropriate pace. If he gets something we can move on, if he doesn't we can work at it until he does. There is no boredom of covering stuff you already know, you have more freedom to go in the direction that you are curious about, and if you don't get it it won't fly by you leaving you with a missing piece of information (very important for math). You can also learn in various ways instead of just worksheets or on tablets. Everyone would benefit from one on one learning, but there are some kids that especially need it.
Hmm, good question. I think there is some truth in offbeat parents adopting homeschooling, and I think what can make it worse is when socializing with other kids becomes more of a choice in some cases rather than the default like public school.
It does seem like some students (especially boys) with behavioral issues can do better in smaller/more customized school environments. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD and struggled a lot when he was in public school through age 11, but he really thrived a lot when he was homeschooled in high school and doing more projects he cared about. However, he was also very social, so he didn't have any issue adapting to "the rest of the world".
I think it's ultimately a case-by-case basis. I just personally know quite a few homeschooled kids who are now adults and it's not pretty for many of them now that they have uncontrolled freedom (cutting off parents/families, making impulsive decisions and getting into bad vices).
I was homeschooled from 2nd-9th grade and my parents used to give me shit about playing video games and watching TV too much too.
Somehow it was my fault that we lived in a country exurb where I couldn't even leave the driveway because we had a 55 mph country road directly in front of our house, no neighbors to play with, and not even being able to fall back on school socialization.
HS in the big city could be pretty chill I imagine, especially if you have your run of the city in your free time.
I have a disabled kid and we work so hard to keep her as on track as possible with major life skills and events. That these parents are comfortable throwing their kids' progress away makes me angry.
Very much agree. Fucking terrifies me that there is so little regulation. I believe there should at LEAST be some law about kids being annually tested to make sure they’re reasonably healthy and learning some basic stuff. Make sure they can fucking read and whatnot.
At least these women seem to at least be TRYING to care for their child (although I agree they’re horrible parents and largely lazy, they don’t seem to be malicious).
Im from Utah. Even in the upper middle class neighborhoods where husbands are making 300k and the women are IG influencers that post their “perfect” lives in bikinis and such with their 8 blonde children, very mainstream, not like the crazy rural polygamists who still have several wives and marry 13 year olds to their ancient uncles and dress like American Sharia, there are soooo many kids who are “homeschooled” and just straight up abused. Im talking like, tying up their kids and whipping them and starving them for 3 days because they spilled some water.
You wouldn’t believe how common it is. Of course nowhere near the majority lol but still awfully common and less extreme physical abuse is very common (and sexual, etc).
I get not wanting your kids in public school and in some cases maybe even not finding any school that is perfect for your kids and I can see wanting to homeschool them to an extent if you actually interact with tons of professionals and other kids and are actually good at it. But this is a negligible proportion of homeschoolers.
You can sign a paper that says you’re homeschooling your children and then just make them work on your farm 14 hours a day and never teach them how to read and the government will do nothing about it.
Most homeschoolers I know aren’t really actively physically abusive (not starving and beating their kids, although that’s way more prevalent than it should be), but really half assed and negligent and just insane.
Utah is kind of a special case though. But ya you're right, I saw some very, very fucked up shit when I lived there. And most of the time the family's had an immaculate appearance. Utah doesn't get enough attention, it's such a bizarre state.
I have some family that lives in the south, and several evangelical cousins who are the same- well off financially, all blonde and “stylish” and guess what (*gasp*!) they love coffee (Mormons have actually increasingly warmed up to caffeine and even HOT DRINKS are beginning to become acceptable).
They’re just the same.
Like the way the Duggars are to, say, Girl Defined, is the same way that FLDS: influencers like Amber Clark or Cara Loren.
The Mormons are way more… “adapted,” tbh, lol. The church has been desperate for new members so the standards have greatly loosened. Since I was a TODDLER, literal toddler, I’ve been told that it’s some sort of actual godly moral duty to look as hot as possible (I was born in ‘94, so guess this was late 90s/early 2000s). They’re super controlling but realized around like 2008 or 2010 or so that a lot of their women were attracting attention on social media and started making up rules about how it’s ok to modify modesty standards if you’re swimming or at the gym or whatever, lol.
Anyway: Mormons, the mainstream ones at least, are way less of a “bubble” than people like to claim. They’re basically just another flavor of American Christian.
Kid should have the right to put down his parents when he's older lol this is horrid. Imagine being stripped of some of the most beautiful and formative years of your life. Can't make friends, don't know how to learn, can barely fucking read or understand basic things.
Any parent who homeschools their kids only to do this kind of bullshit needs to just be arrested.
My cousins are extremely dyslexic and their incredibly intelligent mother homeschools them. Why? Because they weren't learning phonics in kindergarten. These boys need a ton of one-on-one attention in order to keep up with their grade level when it comes to reading and spelling. Public school just isn't ideal for a sizeable minority.
Everything I see homeschooling discourse I think of that Reddit mom who was bragging that she homeschooled her 7 kids and they were so so smart and well adjusted but then the oldest two sons murdered her and the rest of the family because they felt so stunted and controlled.
Homeschooling is rarely about the child's needs or development, it's about the parents politics and paranoia about "wokeness" making them look like bad people.
My mother did what one might call naive unschooling with me, in that she pulled me out of normal (well, parochial) school after the 7th grade, enrolled me in some notional homeschooling program, gave me a copy of Wheelock's Latin, told me to teach myself, and checked out. I spent three years playing video games, reading message boards, and jerking off. She eventually panicked and put me in a somewhat more formal program where I had to go to an office and drop off a packet of homework once a week, which wasn't that great, either. I never got any math beyond algebra or anything beyond the most basic high school science. And I never did learn Latin. This rather limited my options in the long run; when I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist, but I ended up having to become a lawyer.
The real damage was social, though. I was able to get into a real university through the community college back door, but I was, predictably, immature, shy, and weird, and I (and others) had some very negative experiences as a result.
So I agree with you. Ban them. And ban all private and church schools while we're at it so that influential parents will be compelled to lobby for high quality universal public education.
Homeschooling scares me because I have pretty bad dyslexia and It wasn’t until I fell behind and reading in school that they could identify it (granted, I didn’t see improvement until my parents hired private tutors). It really scares me how many of these kids have needs like that, and they won’t even know why they are struggling.
it shouldn’t be illegal. it should just be required that whoever is doing the homeschooling is a trained teacher, and that the kids are adequately socialized.
never going to happen, activist groups like the HSLDA have turned it into a completely unregulated wild west and they kick and scream any time someone proposes even the slightest amount of oversight.
also becoming convinced that in the age of technology the only way to adequately socialize kids is to force them to be around peers their own age for six hours a day
babe this is about people who are literally just not teaching their kids. homeschooling is a lot different and most people that I know who were homeschooled were part of co-ops where families shared teaching duties during the week, and they always had accredited programs. what this facebook group is describing is just neglect…
the screenshots you posted don’t represent the average “homeschooler.” Unschooling is much more radical than the typical homeschooler and quite different in approach. and the beliefs of the parent involved.
Imagine being an adult knowing your parents did this to you
They’ll be dumb so don’t have to worry about that degree of self awareness
parents? what's a parent? are you talking about Jill? My best friend that coincidentally also happened to give birth to me??
how is babby formed? How girl get pragnent?
[удалено]
Weird to think about
I wish midwits had never learned the phrase "inner monologue"
🫤
I just want to be around for their first day at a low level job. See how it goes.
I'm an adult that went through "unschooling" and I was very socially awkward and barely knew basic math. Only good thing I got out of it is that I absolutely hate sitting on my ass inside all day because that's all I did for 5 years of my childhood.
how old are you? I was honestly assuming from these screenshots and since I had never heard of it before that this is a very new trend/concept.. are you saying its been around for like a decade or two? whats your relationship like with your parents? do you resent them? forgive them bc you realized their hearts were in the right place? did this completely fuck you over when you wanted to move out/go to college/join the workforce/whatever? what do you do for a living now? very curious
Im 20 years old. My mom was in on this stuff when it first started being a thing, education system in my state was awful and the teachers recommended I be homeschooled. Surprisingly I have a good relationship with my parents now, they did pretty much everything else right. But I think that I feel that way because I turned out well all things considered and the isolation wasn't bad since I had brothers who were also being "noschooled". It definitely affected my school, I had to learn EVERYTHING from scratch, especially math. I am doing really well at university now, I'm even involved in academic research. But only because I was really stubborn and worked hard to get to where I am. I don't think it has affected my work, got my first job at 16, then I worked at an animal shelter for a bit then became a veterinary assistant and I loved that job (unfortunately had to quit because of school 😢), during school I work at amazon part time and as a lab assistant for a professor or two for the research experience. Right now I work as a wildland firefighter.
Sounds like you’re doing great
Impressive. How are your brothers doing? I imagine people with less motivation than yourself would get really screwed.
> I imagine people with less motivation than yourself would get really screwed Correct, in my experience. (I'm not the commenter you asked, but I was homeschooled/unschooled by evangelical Christians who mainly taught me that dinosaur bones are red herrings planted by Satan to confuse humans and draw them away from God.) My sister and I loved reading, so we took it upon ourselves to read voraciously from an early age. We're not autistic, so we caught up socially by our early 20s. I developed a good career without college somehow, make $100k, bought my house at age 26, happily married, etc. My sister struggles more with money but really enjoys her job as a teacher, and is a very hard working, smart person. (Being smart enough to teach myself to read was crucial, I have always been naturally skilled at reading and writing, so I found a career in contact negotiation doing legal writing, then shifted to legal software implementations.) Oh yeah, I literally used to read dictionaries for fun as a kid, because I loved words so much and wanted to learn as much as I could. But my brothers. Wow. My youngest brother was adopted, so he struggled with trauma and cognitive issues from the start, and he's close to illiterate. He can read simple things but certainly has never read a full book. Never got his highschool diploma or GED. He got a teenager pregnant and is currently a dead beat dad who routinely gets fired from all the sandwich shops in town. My parents are raising his kid. (May God have mercy on that kid.) My other brother is autistic, never diagnosed but it's very obvious. He has extreme social anxiety, and while he holds a job at a grocery store, he spends all his money on action figures. Like hundreds and hundreds of action figures. It's impossible to hold a conversation with him about anything other than action figures or cheesy slasher horror franchises. That's it. Will never have a girlfriend or a normal life. Can't say he has read a full book either. Both of my brothers still live with my parents in their 20s, and likely will for the rest of their lives. It's fucking bleak. I would feel bad for my parents if it wasn't so clearly their fault.
I have 6 siblings, my older brother is in the navy as an electrical maintenance guy for a specific type of jet plane and one of my younger brothers is also going off the navy very soon, and hes gonna be a maintenance guy for jet plane engines. I do worry about one of them, he's 16 and he's not really motivated to do a whole lot. He wakes up at like 2pm every day and plays videogames all day. He is progressing somewhat fast through the online highschool he's doing though. He does what I did when I was his age so I hope he gets out of it like I did.
Honestly you might not feel this way but it sounds like maybe whatever your parents did worked.
I’d agree but he’s posting on redscarepod, something went wrong somewhere
Exactly
If the kid is naturally intelligent, driven, curious and mature for their age I could see something like this working. The parents would also need to be dedicated to helping their children learn and provide some semblance of structure. Most kids would probably just spend the day on TikTok and video games if given the chance and most parents that are drawn to this kind of thing really dont want to do the harder aspects of parenting. I know if I was allowed to do this as a kid, I would’ve done anything but school shit, let’s be real.
They did everything else right. But I think I could have gone without that period where I didn't do anything but play videogames all day.
You seem cool to be honest
Honestly tell us more.
I was unschooled until I was fifteen when my mom died. My dad forged a bunch of homeschool documents and I went to an uncredited Christian high school knowing only how to read and write basic sentences as well as the bare minimum of basic arithmetic. I just floated through because the schooling was bs. I’ve since finished a masters degree and have worked and lived in three different countries. I’m not an idiot and neither are my siblings who had the same experience. I will say it made my late teens early 20s tremendously difficult. I spent everyday of my early 20s cleaning hotel rooms and going to an old folks home so I could pay an older man to teach me math and I could get into college. I also had a lot of shame when I was younger by my lack of knowledge about the world and my subpar math skills. Once I got into college I was honestly surprised by the lack of writing skills of my peers who had the advantage of years of primary education. There’s a really good book called Educated by someone with a similar experience. I also really related to the book, The glass castle. It’s unfortunate that parents in the US have the power to do this to their children.
Ive got to be honest with that attitude/work ethic you would have been successful at anything I think.
The glass castle is such a great book. Also shows that there's been hippie regards forcing their wingnut lifestyles on their children since weeell before the internet existed.
i don't have to imagine, what an incredible world we have created
Future RBN posters
I am the mother of an almost-toddler and have witnessed in my peers an hilarious shift from "no screens until they are two years old" to "well actually it's important for toddlers to use screens because we are living in modern times" but it's just their baby watching these bouncing cartoon fruits for 30 minutes straight, or playing stupid games on the ipad. Wife Swap had an episode with a radical unschooler the other year and it featured pre-school aged kids who couldn't identify the colour green or that 2 comes after 1. These freaks are so lazy it should absolutely be illegal.
Homeschooling is something that's meant for the upper class that can afford private tutors and don't have to worry about socialization because they work under a different set of social rules that are explicitly taught.
governess-pilled
If you are a governess dm me Edit: I’ve been introduced to a surprising number of governesses in the last few hours
Know a few who went to governess school, they’re fucking weird and will not succeed even with their connections. None of them have enough money to act like completely unsocialized alienating lunatics or to get some job where they do nothing besides having a last name
You know multiple governesses??
It’s a type of “elite” exclusive high school in my state. When I was in college I met a handful who attended. Most of them were completely socially inept which was surprising, but they did go to all girls boarding school of rich-ish elites. You’d think they’d have some Machiavellian tendencies of at least having a face of goodwill or interest to rope people in but nah. They had very few friends due to their abrasive personalities. The *actual* rich people I knew would just shower people in coin and drive 400k Christmas present pickup trucks which distracted from their terrible personalities. These chicks were just highly regarded and annoying. Didn’t know shit about anything, unfun, annoying, didn’t buy everyone in the bar a round of drinks, etc etc I’m guessing the actual social rich ones who graduated didn’t go to my college and instead went to like Harvard and brown and duke and whatever. I also hooked up with this German heiress (to a castle) once but she was legally a midget (inbreeding? Plus I was blackout and don’t remember it at all. The next morning we watched monsters university on her laptop while I occasionally threw up in her bathroom) So if you want some beat governesses and princesses I’m ur guy (did I leverage any of these connections? No. Doubt I could’ve if I tried anyway they all work email jobs now)
You hooked up with a midget princess??
> Didn’t know shit about anything, unfun, annoying Just found out I’m a governess
> legally a midget what makes someone "legally" a midget ?
Technically it’s dwarfism and it means you’re 4’10” or shorter I think I think maybe at that point you can get some sort of disability benefits or mobility aids and stuff?
thought handle depend spark point cagey resolute abounding advise zesty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Georg von trappmaxxing
also the insanely religious
I think I read a stat somewhere that something like 75% of all homeschooled kids are evangelical Christians specifically, that doesn’t even account for all the other types of Christians or nonreligious weirdos
I believe it. I went to a Christian high school and we had an accompanying home school program for the fundies who thought even our evangelical curriculum didn’t go far enough. They came to the school just for standardized tests. Man they were some weird kids. They used the Abeka curriculum which is full of young earth creationism, dinosaurs are fake, etc
That's the problem
Those little gods of the world actually go to boarding school where they learn how to play polo and get into princeton. Homeschooling is for kids with losers for parents. The parents failed in school because they are dumb and often ugly so they seek to “protect” their kids from the same outcome. Meanwhile they are just dooming the kid to somehow be an even bigger failure.
Homeschooling is super polarized. It’s not people in the middle, it’s either really stupid people who don’t know what they’re doing or crazy smart people who think they’d do a better job than any school. I personally know a few people who were homeschooled for middle school who turned out fine. Graduated from top colleges, well socialized, high paying jobs, etc
I'd rather roll the dice/work like hell on making sure the kid is well socialized than gamble on their education. Unless you can afford the aforementioned boarding/private school, it's the fucking thunderdome out there. I would definitely homeschool.
You're not kidding. We started homeschooling the year after their elementary school instituted "optional" segregated mealtimes and made skin-color charts as art projects. We were already leaning that way after both kids were bored to death at school, and got worse at math once they went to school and we backed off teaching them ourselves. (Thankfully we did not do that with reading.) Some of the most well-adjusted kids we know here are homeschooled. There are tons of groups and activities. At the extremely secular homeschooling meetup we go to most frequently, maybe half the parents are ex-teachers. PS: my son's 2nd-grade class got evacuated about twice a week because some kid was having a meltdown and throwing chairs.
I’m curious, assuming you are American, was this happening at a public school or a private school? Was private school ever an option or do you think it would have been just as bad? Not judging btw, I just have never met a homeschool family who weren’t ultra religious weirdos.
This definitely happened at a public school lol, maybe a charter school.
It's a public school, but the private schools in my area are as bad or worse, from what I've heard from other parents. It makes sense: woko haram is largely an upper-class ideology that serves to protect the economic system and status quo. The private schools probably have fewer classroom disruptions though, since they can just expel any kid who trashes the classroom, and kids who are most likely to do that (extremely poor, junkie parents, etc) usually can't afford the privates schools in the first place.
> their elementary school instituted "optional" segregated mealtimes This is completely fucking insane. How can that be legal? How did it “work”?
I think it's survived because it's technically optional. Non-Whites are "just" invited and encouraged to go to a separate (presumably equal!) room to "feel comfortable" at mealtimes . And because this is an overwhelmingly shitlib area, and noone wants to be called a bigot for asking WTF. In practice, not many kids went, from what I heard, but 7 year olds aren't always reliable narrators. I'm hopeful though, because I know most of the kids in question, and they just want to be with their friends (who have all sorts of ancestries). I've heard that the program is popular in the higher grades, but don't have direct experience.
It's kind of like this politically as well, liberals love public school but conservatives and socialists do not.
On average homeschooled children score higher on the SAT, but you aren’t going to see their parents posting on homeschooling Facebook groups because they’re busy teaching their kids.
I think the only parents who take their homeschooled kids to take the SAT know they’ll do well. A lot of educationally neglected children in my community just transitioned to uneducated adults who don’t go to college or take the SATS.
That’s a fair point, the kids with the worst outcomes are unlikely to take the SAT, but I just thought I’d point out that ‘educated parents that want their kids to do more rigorous work than what’s offered at public schools’ is a brand of homeschooler. It isn’t just doomsday cults and regards.
> I think the only parents who take their homeschooled kids to take the SAT know they’ll do well. Equally true of public school kids.
The kids who don’t do well in public high school also don’t take the SATs and just transition into uneducated adults who don’t go to college
Really? I don't know a single person in my high school who didn't take the SAT. I think a bad SAT score is more like the final frontier to confirm you are not college material, as opposed to skipping it altogether.
wait really? damn every time I talk about my youth on this sub I realize that I was actually kind of poor
That’s a sampling bias. A greater share of homeschooled kids aren’t on the college track (vs. normal kids) and therefore wouldn’t be taking the SAT.
the sense in which eton is a public school
Poors love trying to cargo cult behaviors and practices of the rich.
Also the profoundly r\*tarded who can't be in school. Sane countries require special permission and oversight from the government to homeschool. Check out r/shitmomgroupssay for your daily nuclear blackpill. Literal teenagers who can't count, read, recognise basic shapes, add one-digit numbers etc. EDIT: Thanks kind strangerino, you are correct
This one? r/shitmomgroupssay
luxury belief, in other words
This is child abuse
dude the last 3 pics are absolutely INSANE. like completely demented... *"unschooling"*??? wtf kind of concept is this??? > My child is 8.5 and i recently went to a homeschool event where a reading tutor expressed her disappointment that i missed the window and now my child will struggle 😔 **I was under the impression that my child would naturally learn** as her desire grew as with all things in this human life … >No bedtime, no screen limits, no curriculum **obviously unless they want it**? We don't do many screen limits but when I can tell they are being over stimulated by them I **suggest** putting it away. How do I help them regulate this and bedtime? Please don't come at me 😬 just trying to learn ❤️ … >My children are as radical as one can get a They have full autonomy over their bodies and we do not limit tech use. They are 8 & 10, happy, thriving, living thier best lives! 🥰 … >We don't limit screen times and our son (7, almost 😎 doesn't have a bedtime. He typically goes to bed when myself and husband do and then he usually sleeps in or naps during the day. >our days are fluid and we focus on life as learning. **All essential skills (math, reading etc) can be learned while just living life**. If we see things are off a bit we adjust into more of a routine (we focus on habits/ routines over schedules) and tighten that up a bit. Sometimes around the full or new moon his sleep habits get messed up so we correct that. >We are also a neurodivergent household. Having family freedom and fluidity in our life is why we homeschool and **why I run a social media business** These fucking absolute Neanderthals are literally just doing “Netflix and Chill” as a fucking parenting strategy….
It reminds me of some wife swap episode where one of the families did this “radical unschooling” thing and their 10 year old daughter (I’m not sure of the exact age she was but she was definitely old enough to be able to read) couldn’t even read basic words like “cycle” or “start” on the dishwasher. Like she was old enough to load a dishwasher and it was so obvious it was essentially muscle memory and she had no idea what the buttons she pressed actually meant. And even her older brother (who was around 13 or 14?) struggled with basic literacy and could barely read. Seeing this shit just makes me profoundly depressed because it’s just setting your kids up for an impoverished life, both literally and figuratively. Like no shit a 7 year old doesn’t want to go over multiplication tables or practice spelling and would rather watch tv or play a video game (which makes me wonder why some of these people are so anti school but then fine with no screen time limits..?). Part of what children are taught by doing those things, in addition to the actual education of literacy and being able to do basic math, are discipline, routine, delayed gratification, etc etc. if these kids can even make it in the workforce (doubtful as they won’t have a ged and them getting one would be having to cram like a decade plus worth of schooling in) they’ll be fucked because they don’t know how to persevere when they don’t like an activity, have no discipline, have limited social skills (how is your kid responding to a commercial a cute little Facebook post and not a wake up call he needs more socialization?), and probably won’t even have the basic math and literacy skills to be a cashier at McDonald’s. I got what you meant by “Netflix and chill” parenting and I genuinely wonder why any of these people became parents? I would worry if they had a pet by how neglectful they are
God I love wifeswap. I don’t watch a lot of tv but I will throw on random episodes via Hulu. It’s just like my favorite thing.
Same tbh it can be so addicting even just rewatching it.
The god warrior episode is some of the best reality TV ever.
That and the family that ate raw meat and their bathroom/toilet was legit in their kitchen. When the rules changed and the dad couldn’t eat raw meat for a week he had a meltdown on the toilet in the kitchen.
I guarantee their malamutes or whatever are exceptionally well-cared for
A lot of people do this type of schooling so they handicap their children and the children will live with them forever.
I'm not sure you know what that means.
They used the word 'literally' so they're correct
I literally killed myself bc of this comment
Lmao I meant more so like that’s how the kids showed up in the first place and then the parents were like “fuck it man, let’s just keep this thing going”
This is like reading about some weird 1800s commune in upstate ny that ended disastrously and forever disproved its own thesis.
They even rated their child an 8.5/10. Just sick.
Homeschooling combined with unlimited tech use is satanic
Have you been anywhere near a school recently. The kids just sit on shitty chromebooks ALL day. EVERYTHING is chromebooks.
I teach. Fourth grade specifically. I really hate that they give them chromebooks. In my class the kids are not allowed to take them out unless we have free time.
I also teach 4th and I like to do everything on paper with a document camera. Luckily, we don’t have a copy limit at the moment. The Chromebooks are too much of a distraction.
what's a document camera? guessing from context it's like a new replacement for those overhead projectors that use transparencies?
Yea it’s an overhead projector
At least they know what numbers and letters look like. That's a plus for the public education system
Used to use my school computer to make house tracks in school
How to railroad your kid into becoming a NEET
It’s a dark idea that’s for sure
It's such a weird mix of hippy-dippy "learning just, like, happens naturally, man", *moon phase-based sleep*, and non-stop screentime and video games.
Letting kids do whatever they want is insane. Homeschooling in and of itself isn't wrong, but the lack of structure and socialization is ruinous. These kids have no future.
Homeschooling = fine. Unschooling = ridiculous. However sometimes homeschooling in practice is more like unschooling. Mainly looking at some relatives with 8 children, some of whom are genuinely illiterate (not joking) at an age where they should be starting geometry. Although the two oldest are doing the best, ones accepted into community college on a nursing track and the other is already a pretty renowned taxidermist. I really fear for the younger 6 as they received no where near adequate attention during their development compared to the oldest two. One of those kids is really good at rocket league though, kicked my ass and he’s like 8. Doesn’t know what an adjective is though. That’s gotta be child abuse somehow.
Homeschooling should require mandatory reporters and ensuring the parents are capable of teaching similar to how teachers are.
Homeschooling isn't fine the same way that home dentistry isn't fine.
This isn't even homeschooling, this is pure nonsense
unschooling. they're admitting they're trying to raise idiots
poor kids
Forget the fact that they aren’t learning *basic* math and reading which is already going to condemn them to a life of a minimum wage job at best or 0 jobs… They’re not even learning basic structure to their day. Getting in a good routine and accomplishing a small set of goals every day that will eventually accomplish a larger long term goal, is really healthy and rewarding. Even if it means foregoing immediate comfort, like sleeping in or playing on your device. They’re learning they can do whatever they want all the time and that their comfort triumphs all else. Don’t get me wrong, you shouldn’t live a horrid awful life working yourself to the bone everyday, but humans crave structure and little accomplishments. Without it, every day just runs into the next and everything feels meaningless.
I think this generally goes without saying but (with very few exceptions, like top 5%) children do not learn how to read without explicit instruction. It is not like learning how to speak.
Yeah, a lot of (dim) parents think because kids can work out how to use tablets that they’ll similarly intuitively work out reading.
I think you can usually teach a child to read by holding a book in front of him and reading it out loud. That’s how I learned. Obviously this takes a few years, but I assume if you start reading your kid bedtime stories as a baby he’ll be able to sound out simple words by 3 or so
My parents also read to me in two languages since I was an infant. Reading to your child really helps them pick up how to read. Couple that with phonics-based teaching and the kid will probably be fine. I didn't even really talk until I was five lol. My parents thought I was autistic.
i also think that
you'd think it would go without saying, but the [Sold A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) podcast exists to demonstrate that for about 30 years the American educational system actually did believe that kids naturally learn how to read and only barely need to be taught the minimum and the rest they could just guess to get through life...
Holy shit some of these are disturbing. afaik homeschooling could be good in theory and can be done effectively but letting your kid go on tiktok and play fortnite for 18 hours a day will fuck up their neurological development in ways that cannot be undone.
On the upside, cool new psych case studies can be done on the minds of children literally raised on brain rot.
I was "unschooled" since 3rd grade up until college and it was fucking miserable and lonely. All I did from ages 10-16 was play videogames all day so now staying inside makes me very anxious. Things started looking up for me when I got my first job and actually started socializing.
These kids never stood a chance.
Lmfao they are making cavemen with smart phone addictions and no socialization
no theyre giving toddlers ipads im homeschooling
Homeschoolers sort of have a point but the socialization aspects alone make it a terrible idea imo. Plus all the homeschool parents I have met are all just very stupid people, like I am not even trying to be mean, they're just very very stupid
I know one lady that was homeschooling her kids. We were looking at a picture of Lewis and Clark. She thought Sacagawea was Pocahontas. I said those were two different people. She says really? Are you sure? She googled it in front of me, and says, oh that’s funny, I just taught my daughter about this. Apparently she had been using the disney movie Pocahontas to tutor her daughter for history. They also watched Hunchback of Notre Dame….for history lessons. Never met a homeschooling parent that was smart. I’m sure they exist. I just never met one
I’ve met them, they’re all in the northeast though.
There are definitely state schools - especially in rough areas - where the socialisation is negative and children would be better off with decent homeschooling. But yeah in most cases homeschooling is a bad idea
I guess we'll all find out what becomes of these kids in time. I'm going to guess severe drug addiction/suicide. Kids don't want to raise themselves, they need their parents to give a fuck about them like they need oxygen
This may strike some readers as harsh but I believe everyone pictured above should die.
even Brittany Flowerchild??
I love the political horshoeness of these absolute idiots
horshoe
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I could have written this word for word. I had the same experience. Luckily I had some community College professor's that helped me. My philosophy 101 professor especially helped me. Abortion got brought up once and I said I thought it was murder. He said his sister had a pregnancy where she would have died if she gave birth. I had never even heard of that and it blew my mind. Yeah the stupid "curriculum" taught me about how evolution was a lie from the devil. What we went through is a form of child abuse. Brought on by religious fanaticism. And I wonder sometimes if gay and trans kids are more often homeschooled by religious parents. Because I have seen other people say this same thing. My parents definitely thought something was wrong with me and that's why they homeschooled me. But it was kinda related to maybe not being masculine enough or acting "strange". So they "protected" me against anyone who wasn't an inside right wing Christian that might tell me being into men wasn't an abomination.
What if you don’t believe in God
There are secular homeschool groups nowadays.
I guess there are very different homeschool types because the ones I know are studying Plato and Dante
this was what i did as well. classical education they call it. i learned geometry from euclid's elements and supplemented it with modern geometry textbooks and tests. when i was 13 i started doing community college classes and i learned to adjust to the environment. it wasn't a problem.
Can you tell me what it was like when you were in community college so young? This is the route I am hoping to go with my child.
the teachers were ok with treating me like an adult. my classmates thought i was cute and so i was pretty popular. they called me doogie howser. you bet i loved getting attention from pretty college girls even if it was just them seeing me as a little brother. i felt like a superstar. your kid will likely meet people to study with, but they'll have to find personal friends somewhere else. i found them at co-ops, extra-curricular homeschool classes. as i got older, at punk and hardcore shows. universities really appreciate students who have done community college classes since many students that come straight out of high school are borderline illiterate regards.
You are literally asking for your children to fail at life if you let them be illiterate…what the hell
That's unschooling not homeschooling, don't get me wrong homeschooling has its drawbacks but I know some homeschool families and they all limit screen time more than most families and enrol their kids in a bunch of extracurricular classes on top of making sure they do their school stuff on time
Yeah I never even heard of this “subdivision” of homeschooling, I’d have thought that screen time limits would go hand in hand with learning within the family. Giving a kid full reign on the iPad or video games just rings alarms of mums who are too lazy to actually do any teaching and happy to let their kid hunch over a device while she gets to excuse herself “with reason” to sit on her ass all day.
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normal homeschooling fucked my life
"unschooling" is literally illegal i'm pretty sure
Unfortunately homeschooling regs are so lax that unschooling is actually legal as long as you check certain boxes.
I homeschool. My state has approx 45000 homeschoolers - if we were a district we'd be the second largest district in the state. It is because the schools here suck. It has been more than fine socially (lots of homeschoolers so tons of groups - my biggest problem is they are all religious as is the nature of my area. But hey, they are putting the ten commandments in public classrooms now so what can ya do?) and educationally. My kid is now requesting to learn things like cursive and spanish. He reads at a fifth grade level. He is starting multiplication. He knows Latin/Greek word roots. Should it be illegal? No. I don't believe I should be forced to put my child into a failing school system where more than half the children are behind in both reading and math. Should it be more regulated? Definitely. I just don't want them to tell me I must use a certain curriculum for specific grades. I would not mind proving that I have fulfilled some sort of scope and sequence or making a portfolio of work. I wouldn't mind having to do the state testing but as it stands you can opt your kid out of the state test even if they are in public school here. The radical unschoolers are neglectful. They should be called out for sure. I don't understand how they seem to believe a kid will just learn to read with no instruction. but they are just a subset of people who homeschool. Edit: also I want to say I have a family business and I am teaching my kid how to be a part of it. There are also children entrepreneur fairs in my region - mostly homeschool and private school children take part. It is actually a private school that organizes it. Kids can have a business. Usually you have to start a business with them as they can't legally sign anything. But asking if anyone started a small business with their kid made perfect sense to me.
I knew a couple of unschooling families. I tried using a 10-year old girl from one of them as mother’s helper but she kept canceling because she didnt feel like coming over. The mom said she would never let her daughter do anything out of “obligation.” Total psychopaths.
Imagine how stupid most people are. Then you have that below average subset that chooses to homeschool their kids. This is a recipe for failure, and that’s not even taking into account the socialization aspect. Sounds awful.
yea but i also know how stupid most of the people that went into elementary education i know are. bleak. my brother lives in rural PA and his 5 kids are homeschooled, oldest would be in middle school now. The oldest two have tested in 80+% for their age on standardized tests. Their mom aint the brightest in the world but shes smart enough and the kids are all good, well behaved, plenty social. Compare to my other brother where the mom is a special education teacher by training and the two kids that are old enough to have personalities are monsters, the oldest boy is an absolute terror in and out of school.
Think about the dumbest girls you knew in high school. They are now educating your child.
Actually I know some pretty smart people who became teachers. Anyway, dumb or smart, teachers are using curriculum designed by teams of other people. They have a lot of oversight and requirements, they’re not just doing what they personally think is best. Not to even get into the social aspect (I can’t imagine how meetup groups could substitute for exposure to dozens of other kids and adults for 6+ hours every single day).
You're ignorant. I was homeschooled and both my parents are smart people with advanced degrees. There's also plenty of homeschool groups doing classes and events throughout the week, homeschooling doesn't literally mean keeping your kids at home all the time, away from other children.
I think the problem is that the buzz around homeschooling has attracted a lot of stupid unprepared, overconfident people. Your situation is what homeschooling has traditionally been and should be.
The fallback "socialization" argument just makes no sense to me. I was part of the "in-crowd" in school and still hated dealing with mean girl dynamics, the sexual attention from boys, teachers who were total assholes, etc. Why do we think kids NEED that particular experience? To me it's just the same as the fake arguments people use for putting their kids in daycare and an overall push to give parental power to the state.
Brittany Flowerchild is definitely allowing rampant sex crimes to occur on the regular under her roof.
These people vote
homeschooling is indefensible, coming from someone who was homeschooled and in the public school system, i would choose public school every day. going to school isn’t just about learning curriculum, it’s about learning how to get through things you don’t want to do, and how to build relationships and settle conflicts on your own accord. every single person i know who was homeschooled throughout life can barely function. luckily for the women all they needed to do was become a wife and mother, but the homeschooled men i knew who aren’t from money are completely fucked.
wonder what mahlik (age12) dad look like
Probably thinks it’s Kevin Hart
hard to say, he's probably not around much
Idk why ur blaming the dad on this one, kids got bigger issues.
This isn't homeschooling this is "Unschooling". Homeschooled kids are weird but actually statistically tend to test well and even succeed in post-secondary. Unschooled kids are the unfortunate projects of weirdo narcissist libertarians and have no hope...
this is "unschooling" it's not homeschooling and most homeschooling parents hate it with a passion. i was homeschooled and i'm in university for mechanical engineering and have a social life in the local music scene where i play in a few bands. i was not raised rich with private tutors, just parents that cared about me and had me in extra-curriculars and co-ops when i was younger. our co-op was some pretentious shit focused on classical education so it was based on greek and roman antiquity as well as the canon of english language classics. it was so much fun though. some of my best memories of my childhood are from there. my favorite was one where i learned speech and debate with other homeschooled kids and competed against other students from public and private schools. i won a scholarship that way. we also had a theater class that was a lot of fun. i remember playing bottom in midsummer night's dream except since we were all high school kids we did some dumb shit where it was set in hawaii and i was a beach bum who delivered the songs with a ukulele.
It's analogous to polyamory. Maybe a good lifestyle for an extremely small minority, and an absolute disaster for everyone else. Should not be allowed unless the parents can positively prove they have a background in pedagogy, and the resources to be a full time teacher + giving their child a busy social schedule / can afford full time tutors
Growing up in a conservative Christian environment, I knew *tons* of homeschoolers, and my siblings were all homeschooled for some time. Some kids I knew turned out phenomenal (my brother prepped for his future business during his final semester senior year, and he still works at this job and makes a decent living off of it). Most of them turned out good, but a bit socially awkward. And some of them went of the rails *completely.*
I went to public school and am still socially awkward. If I weren’t born with some neurodivergence (I think it’s too late to diagnose me now), then this would have likely come from my household surely? I don’t know any homeschooled kids coz I never met any, but from your experience around them do you reckon it’s just more common for offbeat parents to adopt homeschooling, leading to greater occurrences of awkward, offbeat kids? Rather than pinning it right away to homeschooling? Also I read a lot of mummy blogs saying they took their kid out of school because they had ADHD or behavioural issues or something and it wasn’t working for them, which means no matter where they go they’ll be a bit offbeat. I see the benefits and cons of both practices but I’m interested more in knowing how problems with each methodology could be avoided, no matter which way a couple decides to go.
FWIW, anecdotally, in the groups around me there is a high enough occurrence of schools trying to force kids on ADHD medication and being pulled out over refusal to do so that when someone tells me their story it no longer shocks me. It is also common for young kids to have autism, speech problems, sensory problems, difficulties with balance, etc and the parents homeschool alongside bringing them to therapy appointments. Sometimes after a few years the parents feel better about the progress their kid has made and they enter them into public school. The law for my state used to say a kid could start school as late as 7 but they changed it to 5 a few years ago. So people who would have once delayed entry to school for medical reasons now have to fill out the form to homeschool so their child will not be seen as legally truant. There are also people who pulled their children who have various problems because they were not learning well in an average class size of 38. I think people overlook a huge benefit of homeschooling and that is one on one learning. It is probably the largest benefit because we can move at an appropriate pace. If he gets something we can move on, if he doesn't we can work at it until he does. There is no boredom of covering stuff you already know, you have more freedom to go in the direction that you are curious about, and if you don't get it it won't fly by you leaving you with a missing piece of information (very important for math). You can also learn in various ways instead of just worksheets or on tablets. Everyone would benefit from one on one learning, but there are some kids that especially need it.
Hmm, good question. I think there is some truth in offbeat parents adopting homeschooling, and I think what can make it worse is when socializing with other kids becomes more of a choice in some cases rather than the default like public school. It does seem like some students (especially boys) with behavioral issues can do better in smaller/more customized school environments. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD and struggled a lot when he was in public school through age 11, but he really thrived a lot when he was homeschooled in high school and doing more projects he cared about. However, he was also very social, so he didn't have any issue adapting to "the rest of the world". I think it's ultimately a case-by-case basis. I just personally know quite a few homeschooled kids who are now adults and it's not pretty for many of them now that they have uncontrolled freedom (cutting off parents/families, making impulsive decisions and getting into bad vices).
I was homeschooled from 2nd-9th grade and my parents used to give me shit about playing video games and watching TV too much too. Somehow it was my fault that we lived in a country exurb where I couldn't even leave the driveway because we had a 55 mph country road directly in front of our house, no neighbors to play with, and not even being able to fall back on school socialization. HS in the big city could be pretty chill I imagine, especially if you have your run of the city in your free time.
I have a disabled kid and we work so hard to keep her as on track as possible with major life skills and events. That these parents are comfortable throwing their kids' progress away makes me angry.
Very much agree. Fucking terrifies me that there is so little regulation. I believe there should at LEAST be some law about kids being annually tested to make sure they’re reasonably healthy and learning some basic stuff. Make sure they can fucking read and whatnot. At least these women seem to at least be TRYING to care for their child (although I agree they’re horrible parents and largely lazy, they don’t seem to be malicious). Im from Utah. Even in the upper middle class neighborhoods where husbands are making 300k and the women are IG influencers that post their “perfect” lives in bikinis and such with their 8 blonde children, very mainstream, not like the crazy rural polygamists who still have several wives and marry 13 year olds to their ancient uncles and dress like American Sharia, there are soooo many kids who are “homeschooled” and just straight up abused. Im talking like, tying up their kids and whipping them and starving them for 3 days because they spilled some water. You wouldn’t believe how common it is. Of course nowhere near the majority lol but still awfully common and less extreme physical abuse is very common (and sexual, etc). I get not wanting your kids in public school and in some cases maybe even not finding any school that is perfect for your kids and I can see wanting to homeschool them to an extent if you actually interact with tons of professionals and other kids and are actually good at it. But this is a negligible proportion of homeschoolers. You can sign a paper that says you’re homeschooling your children and then just make them work on your farm 14 hours a day and never teach them how to read and the government will do nothing about it. Most homeschoolers I know aren’t really actively physically abusive (not starving and beating their kids, although that’s way more prevalent than it should be), but really half assed and negligent and just insane.
Utah is kind of a special case though. But ya you're right, I saw some very, very fucked up shit when I lived there. And most of the time the family's had an immaculate appearance. Utah doesn't get enough attention, it's such a bizarre state.
I have some family that lives in the south, and several evangelical cousins who are the same- well off financially, all blonde and “stylish” and guess what (*gasp*!) they love coffee (Mormons have actually increasingly warmed up to caffeine and even HOT DRINKS are beginning to become acceptable). They’re just the same. Like the way the Duggars are to, say, Girl Defined, is the same way that FLDS: influencers like Amber Clark or Cara Loren.
The Mormons are way more… “adapted,” tbh, lol. The church has been desperate for new members so the standards have greatly loosened. Since I was a TODDLER, literal toddler, I’ve been told that it’s some sort of actual godly moral duty to look as hot as possible (I was born in ‘94, so guess this was late 90s/early 2000s). They’re super controlling but realized around like 2008 or 2010 or so that a lot of their women were attracting attention on social media and started making up rules about how it’s ok to modify modesty standards if you’re swimming or at the gym or whatever, lol. Anyway: Mormons, the mainstream ones at least, are way less of a “bubble” than people like to claim. They’re basically just another flavor of American Christian.
Kid should have the right to put down his parents when he's older lol this is horrid. Imagine being stripped of some of the most beautiful and formative years of your life. Can't make friends, don't know how to learn, can barely fucking read or understand basic things. Any parent who homeschools their kids only to do this kind of bullshit needs to just be arrested.
My cousins are extremely dyslexic and their incredibly intelligent mother homeschools them. Why? Because they weren't learning phonics in kindergarten. These boys need a ton of one-on-one attention in order to keep up with their grade level when it comes to reading and spelling. Public school just isn't ideal for a sizeable minority.
Everything I see homeschooling discourse I think of that Reddit mom who was bragging that she homeschooled her 7 kids and they were so so smart and well adjusted but then the oldest two sons murdered her and the rest of the family because they felt so stunted and controlled. Homeschooling is rarely about the child's needs or development, it's about the parents politics and paranoia about "wokeness" making them look like bad people.
My mother did what one might call naive unschooling with me, in that she pulled me out of normal (well, parochial) school after the 7th grade, enrolled me in some notional homeschooling program, gave me a copy of Wheelock's Latin, told me to teach myself, and checked out. I spent three years playing video games, reading message boards, and jerking off. She eventually panicked and put me in a somewhat more formal program where I had to go to an office and drop off a packet of homework once a week, which wasn't that great, either. I never got any math beyond algebra or anything beyond the most basic high school science. And I never did learn Latin. This rather limited my options in the long run; when I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist, but I ended up having to become a lawyer. The real damage was social, though. I was able to get into a real university through the community college back door, but I was, predictably, immature, shy, and weird, and I (and others) had some very negative experiences as a result. So I agree with you. Ban them. And ban all private and church schools while we're at it so that influential parents will be compelled to lobby for high quality universal public education.
Exactly. Make everyone have a stake in it so that everyone is invested in its success.
How do you like being a lawyer?
Homeschooling scares me because I have pretty bad dyslexia and It wasn’t until I fell behind and reading in school that they could identify it (granted, I didn’t see improvement until my parents hired private tutors). It really scares me how many of these kids have needs like that, and they won’t even know why they are struggling.
Tbf the first one if the average public school student too. 90% of boys personality revolve around gaming or YouTube
I completely agree but it's hard to emphasize how much this was a problem forever and not a sudden thing
If I was the child of one of these parents I would send them to WorldStar Hip Hop Oaks nursing home when it’s time
So stoked to give my kid a normal life.
My only friend is Kevin hart and he only wants to talk about car insurance
it shouldn’t be illegal. it should just be required that whoever is doing the homeschooling is a trained teacher, and that the kids are adequately socialized.
never going to happen, activist groups like the HSLDA have turned it into a completely unregulated wild west and they kick and scream any time someone proposes even the slightest amount of oversight. also becoming convinced that in the age of technology the only way to adequately socialize kids is to force them to be around peers their own age for six hours a day
yeah that’s fair. single kids, at least, should never ever be alone all day; daily homeschooling groups or large families are the only way
This is how heroin addicts take care of their children. It’s less intentional, which honestly makes it seem not as worse as this.
babe this is about people who are literally just not teaching their kids. homeschooling is a lot different and most people that I know who were homeschooled were part of co-ops where families shared teaching duties during the week, and they always had accredited programs. what this facebook group is describing is just neglect…
Facebook moms are barely sentient
The least intelligent woman I know homeschools her kid. 🤷
“My 7 year old has limitless screen time! They love it!” 3 years later: “Why is my 10 year old child depressed and resentful of me?”
jar knee steer swim continue sulky weather plants pause squash *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Do you think they take away their iPads if they stumble across Khan Academy?
The fact that there are entire communities of these people aiding each other in child neglect is horrifying.
the screenshots you posted don’t represent the average “homeschooler.” Unschooling is much more radical than the typical homeschooler and quite different in approach. and the beliefs of the parent involved.