Before COVID, the only people I saw home schooling were doing so out of ideologic incentives.

(Other than extreme edge cases).

I see no issue with home schooling receiving a negative rep.

Unless you're a trained educator, I see no benefit to home schooling children and depriving them of standard curriculums and socializing.

(I'm biased having only experienced positive public school environments in Russia and Canada. Perhaps there is some dystopia with the American Public School system, but the root problem is America, not public schools)

Or some people will realize that remote work isn’t for them and others that hadn’t previously considered it will realize that it does work for them. I’ve been remote for 8 or so years now and in terms of work this pandemic period doesn’t feel different. So that leads me to believe that there will be other people who were previously working from an office but also have a space in their home that is conducive to remote work will decide that they want to continue working this way.

I've done some WFH days each week in the past and been quite productive. I've been doing quarantine work for 7 weeks now and I feel like it's fucking with my head and I can barely get any work done. This sucks. I'm considering asking for a week or 2 of unpaid vacation.

I think now, a lot more companies will be open to it, and will be prepared for it. I know many companies who have maintained they REALLY need onsite, but now realizing that wasn't actually a hard requirement. I'm sure some are having negative experiences. Also I think it is actually easier with everyone remote rather than some in office and some remote.

It's worth distinguishing between homeschooling and the current situation of "at-home schooling" or remote schooling, which is quite a different beast.

My kids are being schooled by their teachers remotely, not by me - this process has little in common with "traditional homeschooling" other than the room it happens in, everything else is different.

> people will think that this is what remote work is like

Oh man, this is the truest thing I've heard since the quarantine started.

I loved that my team had a flexible WFH policy year round. On days with chores, I could stay at home and get some work done. I could travel while working. If I work up late or on the wrong side of the bed, I could avoid the trouble of dressing up and just login while brewing myself a coffee.

But now, I hate it. I've realized, I love remote work precisely because I can work from the office the rest of the time. The loss of productivity, communication and socialization doesn't feel like much if it is 1 day a week.

But, all the time. God No!

Just curious, what exactly is not representative?

For me personally, I can do my work just fine, I just miss being around other my coworkers and having a clear separation between my work environment and my home environment. I look forward to returning to my office when it's possible.

I'm more optimistic. I think there will be quite a lot of people who try home schooling for the first time and are pleasantly surprised. Doubly so for remote work.

Of course some people will hate it, but horses for courses.

I've been wfh for the last 12 months and now people are telling me "you said it aint that bad, but it's terrible", and yeah it's been terrible to be wfh AND isolated. This should not count as a real experience for anyone.

I honestly don't understand how home schooling is supposed to work. I mean, primary school maybe (though even there I seriously doubt the capacity of most parents, but whatever, we could handle that). But secondary school & beyond? Like, we're lucky that we can explain path, physics, chemistry, grammar to our kids & help them, but we struggle on some of the subjects (& gave up on others - e.g. chemistry - at highschool level). But it's one thing to help them on some subjects - and a whole different things to be able to actively teach everything: not only those, but history, geography, foreign languages, arts, music etc - that's far more than one full-time job! The only reason why teachers are able to do it is that they teach a single subject (to an entire classroom). Yeah, in primary school you (mostly) have a single teacher for the class, so home-schooling is plausible. But beyond that, I just don't understand it.

Tbh I’ve never liked homeschooling so that would be ok. But agree with you on remote work.

Agreed. Both are not representative of what they actually are because of the context!

Really? Because it seems to me like the only thing people are going to realize is having kids to take care of 24/7 is a real pain in the ass, and maybe we shouldn’t be having so many.

I’d say the majority of people who are still employed and have no kids are having a fairly pleasant time at home.

True. But it also teaches kids to work on schedule, follow rules, and do what they're told.

Forces them to "learn" things they dislike and will never use in adulthood.

Reading comics is still reading. Any reading is good at that age. Your brain needs the time to build up the pattern recognition engine :-)

Can you really prove that a houseplant is happy or that "we" can make them happy?

That would be interesting.

Being unhappy causes a variety of issues that effect your cognitive ability. Humans simply perform better when they are happy.

> You have to remember, the main purpose of school is to provide babysitting so all of the adults can work and keep the economy humming.

I know this is a popular opinion but it’s ahistorical. Compulsory education was introduced in the late 1800s when about half of Americans still worked in agriculture, by far the largest sector of the economy at the time. Most families did not need childcare outside their home.

Today, school ends well before the professional workday does—pretty poor childcare.

The fact is that the main purpose of school is to educate kids, which is necessary to prepare them to live in a complex society. But, to teach kids you also have to care for them, hence the “fillers” like lunch and exercise.

Sadly, it’s true that for some kids, school is a major source of food and care in their lives. This is a failing of society, not of schools specifically.

> at home you can tailor the lessons to your kids, and you don't keep getting interrupted because some kids out of 30 in your classroom are being disruptive.

Which is why it’s legal to home school your kids if you want to, even when there is not a global pandemic. :-)

> the main purpose of school is to provide babysitting so all of the adults can work and keep the economy humming

This point has been especially proven by the fact that a lot of countries right now have reopened schools, but only for children whose parents can't supervise them at home because they have jobs that require them onsite still.

> you don't keep getting interrupted because some kids out of 30 in your classroom are being disruptive.

That depends on if you have multiple children and one starts flipping out.

Overall your point is pretty valid though

Is this a bad thing? Birth rates in developed countries are low as is. Take away the free day care and they will likely drop further.

> and you don't keep getting interrupted because some kids out of 30 in your classroom are being disruptive.

and you will grow up unprepared to real life facts, such as people interrupting.

How did you manage 3 at once from the beginning?

We're debating what to do come August. We have a 5 year old entering Kindergarten. We live in a good school district, but we don't want to be part of an experiment as they figure out how to do online learning. Online learning for 5 year olds sounds disastrous too. So we've thought of trying home schooling.

The thing is, that 5 year old comes with twin 2 year olds. And the 5 year old has a huge attitude when dealing with us, but not teachers. She is way more productive when it comes to learning stuff in pre-school than with us because she flat out ignores us at least half the time. Can't imagine how my wife would manage that along with twin toddlers running around destroying everything.

Days are already frustrating as hell for her. A majority of the day is spent with at least one of them crying over something. Trying to stack learning on top of it sounds like a recipe for bad times.

Edit: especially with social distancing. Any other time we could lean on grandparents or local families in similar situations. Right now we can't. Not everyone can use extended family in normal times, much less the current problems we're facing.

- martial arts class gives (non-parent) teacher-student setting w/ same-age peers

- play groups gives play time w/ mixed-age kids

- piano lesson gives (non-parent) teacher-student setting

- living every day life has child interact with adults for various things (e.g. ask the cashier if they have X for you to buy)

- tight knit parish community gives very diverse age range (babies, toddlers, teens, seniors, etc) for both play, service, hikes, etc

- siblings close in age

Full disclosure, I was very skeptical of homeschooling to start and am myself a product of one of the best Bay Area private schools. I only chose to give homeschooling a try as I had a flexible remote-work situation and thus a year of not being tied to a school schedule seemed worth a shot. It has been a success beyond my imagination and my son is not only ahead of where I expected scholastically, but also socially.

Do you have any concerns about the social development of kids who go to traditional schools, where they interact solely with other kids close to their own age or teachers who are much older than them and whose interactions are rigid and artificial?

Sorry to sound snarky, but the idea that homeschool kids are somehow socially stunted is a myth that needs to die. If anything, it's the other way around. Homeschool kids are exposed to a much wider variety of social situations which develops a broad base of social skills and preparation for adult responsibility much more effectively than the stifling and artificial environment of public schools does.

All of my friends who were homeschooled did boy scouts, church programs, etc. and almost all of them have better-than-average social skills. I wasn't homeschooled but, based on the outcomes I've seen, I'll be homeschooling my children at least until high school.

People are very opinionated about this topic, and I’m sure that’s because there’s not really an answer to “does homeschooling have negative impacts on social development?”, beyond “It depends.”

I’m saying this as an unschooler, who was entirely without a mandated curriculum from 2nd grade until adulthood.

A lot of it depends on the reasons for home schooling. My mum was just hippie-crunchy enough that when 6 year old me said I didn’t want to go to school, she just let me leave at the end of the year.

I’ve met incredibly awkward homeschoolers who were not in school due to religious parents. I’ve met families who just travel so much, it was easier on everybody to just homeschool their kids - these kids tend to be more socially developed than average IMO - May be because that lifestyle rewards kids for being outgoing. I’ve noticed many more trends, but there is ALWAYS an exception to the rule.

I should note that “successful” homeschooling does seem correlated with economic and social privilege; for me this was the case - I had the privilege of being raised in the greater Boston area, near enough public transport I could go into the city whenever I want. Personally, I can’t imagine raising kids in a rural environment where they can’t take bus anywhere, and don’t have easy access to other kids their own raise. But, of course, I know several people who were raised like that and are way more mature adults than most. I think this point is obvious, but traditional homeschooling also requires the privilege of having a parent who is not working, or the money to hire tutors (unschooling and co-op based homeschooling obviously has less of a dependency here).

For what it's worth, among me and my siblings, the one with the best social skills, the widest circle of friends, and who is still most in contact with childhood friends is the one who was homeschooled.

No, that wasn't me. I certainly spent a lot more time interacting with other kids my age during weekdays, but quantity isn't quality.

I'd be curious to know if there's been any long-term research on this subject, but I'm not aware of anything.

Virtually all homeschooling families are extremely active in at least one social group.

This is the most common question we homeschoolers receive.

1. Students and teachers are not always good role models and schools are not always a good environment for learning soft skills. Some schools are quite toxic. I'm sure many here can relate.

2. Who better to teach you social cues than your parents who love you and will be patient with you?

3. It depends on the child and the parents. Our oldest daughter is extremely introverted and was homeschooled yet has better social graces than her mother and I combined. Our middle daughter (extrovert) has a strong network of online/offline friends through various programs and activities. She will be starting a private school in the fall.

4. Homeschooled children get used to interacting with adults who are not in a school environment and tend to communicate in an adult like manner (IMHE).

5. The successful homeschoolers tend not to advertise it, yet they are everywhere. Unsuccessful home schoolers often become the subject click bait articles or books (ala Tara Westover's experience).

School for me was a horrible experience socially for me. I wish I'd been home schooled.

School could easily be considered a negative social experience. Unnaturally spending 6+ hours/day with kids of the same age under loose social guidance. A home-schooler has his neighborhood and extra-curricular time which are more than sufficient, but also one huge advantage: the potential to spend time in the real world with authentic relationships with people of all ages.

There is no chance that a homeschooled kid is going to learn all the social, leadership skills that a kid who goes to a public/private school does. The diversity of people that you get to meet in a school, is pretty much impossible in a home school setting. What about the freedom to be away from your parents and run wild? I imagine a homeschooled kid always tagging along with his parents.

>>However, it was miserable to start primarily because we tried to mimic the exact school environment and schedule at home; a complete disaster

They had decided how, it just turned out they found a better way after giving it a try.

>I suppose I just imagine most people have an idealised view of their child's education, and then decide they need to home-school to realise it. But perhaps that just wrong, I've no experience, first-hand or otherwise.

They do, and they also have idealized views of their children. If you go into home education with a rigid plan of execution, you (and your children) are likely going to have a bad time.

Teaching is hard. Striking out on your own vector of pedagogy is a large risk that, if done well, can yield very large rewards...it can also be a disaster.

In California, the answer to that last question is proposition 13 cutting the legs off of school district funding in the face of a rising population. That's why there are always education bills, because schools have been short on money for 50 years.

There are some benefits to public education that I think many on HN gloss over due to their privileged perspective when they make sweeping generalities.

Fitness and access to a nurse is a benefit. For some kids, gym class is the only time they are physically active, and a checkup in the nurses office is their only source of medical care. Access to role models is another function. Sometimes a teacher or coach is the only positive role model a kid has in their life. Another benefit of schools are that they are a safe space for kids from abusive households.

Families in poverty also rely on meals from their school district. In the face of this crisis, LAUSD is still making meals for students and their families, at times giving away 500,000 meals in a single day (1).

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-19/lausd-fe...

Don't forget schools are also designed to keep kids off the labor market until they're ~18.

Imagine what giving all those 13 year olds $2/hour jobs would do to the labor market.

School doesn’t teach those skills from my personal experience.

I was a product of public schooling, the my way or highway attitudes of some teachers, the social isolation, cliches, bullying, teasing, all severely stunted my social development until I was a teenager and began competing in sports team environments, working jobs, and interacting with the public outside of school.

After a couple years I was far more developed socially than anything the school environment provided in the decade prior to that.

When I hear this reason often used, I fear it’s from people who enjoyed their social life in school due to reasons not actually involving the school, and place too much value in those social dynamics, ignoring the really ugly parts of it that hamper growth for a lot of students, including themselves.

My own experiences show they lack any real application to life outside of school. I’ve never had a decent job that worked socially like any school environment I’ve been in, and the one or two I did have were quickly left.

I didn't learn a single one of those skills from attending public school. Every public school I attended (and I attended several, since my parents were chasing the accelerated learning program every time it moved) was not only a huge waste of time, but actively psychologically harmful.

Based on the data I've seen, what I describe is a typical or even better-than-average public school experience.

Private school was infinitely better once I started going, and my homeschooled friends (who I met at university) are, on the whole, vastly better adjusted than the people I attended public school with.

Let's be honest - public schools' primary functions are to act as a daycare center and subsidized food distribution site. If you child is at all intelligent, you're probably better off leaving them at home with some books than sending them off to PS17851. I know I would have been better off that way!

School can indeed teach those other skills. But mostly only by mistake and much more it does the opposite.

Because in fact I learned bullying in (high) school. How to be bullied and how to bully others. (I actually remember being given a informal class about how to to it properly, by other pupils) There were allways at least on person in class who was the bottom of the social order, who would get everything. But everybody got its share, who showed any weakness or lack of "coolness" which could mean anything at that time, like not smoking.

And I know many people who never sing anymore, because they have been traumatized in the school singing presentation. Likewise with other presentations. I could always sing without problem, as I learned singing from my mother, but others whose parents did not sing with them, were always scared of the singing and embarrasing themself in front of everyone, but accepted that as a 2 times a year ritual and just reinforced their trauma every time.

But in compensation I got a trauma with presentation. I don't know exactly how it started, but probably with a teacher who liked to destroy childrens self confidence, if they were not perfectly prepared for the boring assignment and a class who was either sleeping or annoying. Got me a stuttering habit, too.

Today I can give presentations, but I had a really hard time learning it later in life.

So I am not sure what I will do, once my baby gets old enough, as I am located in germany and germany does not like homeschooling and I also would want other homeschoolers to be around, because I also think, that learning in small groups mostly beats learning alone or one on one.

Those goals make sense to me, as I think they're all valuable, and I think some people do learn those skills while in school, but I'm not sure they learn them because of school. As the old saying goes: "what gets measured gets done", and schools only really measure test scores and years attended. I am not sure that schools really help people learn many social skills.

Have you seen evidence that schools contribute more to social skills than their alternatives might? I'd like to agree with you, but I am a little skeptical.

If that's one of the primary purposes of school, then schools should have four hours of recess per day, because recess is where you learn all of those skills (except presenting in front of an audience). Most of the rest of the time, you're sitting still in a classroom listening to a teacher, not interacting with your peers.

I know my anecdata is just that but my experience to date is the all the homeschooled people I've met are far more social on average than the average non-homeschooled people.

No idea why that would be but of the 12 or so I've meet they've stood out as above average.

This is simple dogma, so I would encourage you to research and listen to the experiences of those on different paths.

Edit option’s gone but I meant “number sentence”, of course. Heh. And yes that’s really what they call them. Half the kids can’t even kind-of tell you what a sentence is in English and they’re using them as a metaphor in math. Clearly a good and useful idea.

I share your concern that too much gamification in school helps normalize Skinner-boxy manipulation in other venues (Fortnite, slot machines, etc.).

I do think gamification can have positive externalities as well, though. Comparing high scores in Number Munchers was the first time in my early 90s grade school that it was socially cool to stand out academically. That can be socially liberating for smart students afraid to be uncool (or academically liberating for cool students afraid to be seen as caring about school). I don't think you get the same effect if the status signal comes in the form of praise/grades from the "uncool" teacher.

When my state decided to go to 'e-learning' for the rest of the year, those of us who are located in rural, or low-income districts were terrified. The high-income districts couldn't be more excited; they're biggest headache was making sure each of their students' school issued laptops were appropriately tagged before being handed out.

This will further bake in the inequities already present in our garbage education system. Those that have, will have more, better experiences due to involved parents (because they have flexible or even just able-to-be-completed remotely jobs). This will be an enrichment period for those students. If I had a high achieving middle schooler at a high income district, this would be amazing for their development. For those that don't have, they're losing 3-6 months of education, at a minimum. For my child, even with two highly educated parents, due to a lack of resources and access to technology, this will be a loss.

Source: My career in rural, urban, and suburban education, both k-12 and higher education.

I think you're using poor as a proxy for uninvolved parents.

I'd actually be interested in the data if anyone has it. If you have no dad and mom is working then you're at a huge disadvantage no matter what.

These same kids ruin school for everyone else. Dead beat parents treat school like a day-care and ruins the learning experience for everyone else.

Also poor kids go to poor schools. 35 kids to a class, teacher who has mentally checked out 3 decades ago, gang activity in the halls, books are literally falling apart.

Going to a poor school sucks more than learning from home. Bullies and gang activities are rampant. School administration doesn't care because those stats make the school look bad. Yuck

> Two, three months without schooling will significantly hamper their development

Are you sure about that? Having gone through lots of school, I'm fairly certain that missing three months of it would have no negative effect on anyone's development.

"The idea that children should study at home during the school closure is ludicrous"

This sounds like a cultural failing, not some law of nature.

This is why officials in many states, even ones that were gung-ho social distancing like California and Washington, were reluctant to close the schools. It was predicted that a large number of kids would instead just be congregating together on streets, defeating much of the point of closing the schools. But they were caught between a rock and a hard place. If they didn't close the schools, the kids become an infection vector that undoes much of the sacrifice of having people wfh, avoid social gatherings, and cancel large events.

> I'm almost 40, have a Master's degree and have self-studied my whole life but I often have trouble being efficient when I'm home. So no way children seven to fifteen years old can do it.

I do have problems now that I'm older (than you even). Things were very different when I was K-12 age. We sure weren't rich, but I was naturally curious and had reasonable access to books. All I really needed from the school system was for them to stay out of the way.

That said, I was baked in my parents' near-reverence for education. There are a lot of parents who probably regard academics the way my parents regarded sports (i.e., as useless), and those kids largely aren't going to do well.

My entire childhood of homeschooling disagrees. No my parents are not academic.

It's more about designated environment. If you think you can study in the same place where you play video games, it's not going to work unless you have extreme self confidence and control.

But if you build a discipline slowly and steadily, change what you associate your current environment with then you can effectively focus on things that should matter.

> Two, three months without schooling will significantly hamper their development.

Only within the rigid schedule set for them in the default school curriculum. I doubt they’re ultimately going to notice a difference of 3 months.

To some, probably. I'm pretty sure the British government realized this from the start, but despite their efforts to resist school closures they were strong-armed into doing it anyway by the teachers and the press.

> So no way children seven to fifteen years old can do it.

You shouldn't generalize from your own experience like that.

For example, see "school of the air", an Australian rural education program that used to run over radio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air

Australia has long been a world leader in distance education, likely because they had such a large problem, and a head start on solving it.

Our school barely has enough books to cover three classes, let alone the entire grade. Likewise, I've tried calling students on the numbers their parents listed both on the syllabus and on the official enrollment forms have still have sometimes had it unanswered.

Yep. Post service is still working. People have been homeschooling their children long before the internet became ubiquitous.

The kids will just retreat to their study? At a lot of homes, there are much bigger challenges than just internet access.

I don't have land-line internet available at my home in greater DC metro. We survive on LTE hotspots. Praying for the success of StarLink!

Yup. I can only get Spectrum in my apartment, the fastest plan available is claimed to be 100mbps and doesn't hit anywhere close to that in reality, throttles aggressively. 4G coverage is pretty shit here in LA too. Crappy coverage, slow, and drops the connection all the time.

My options are deal with this, move, or have no internet. Internet provider choices will weigh heavily when I'm apartment hunting after this lease.

The US has an obsolete, anti-competitive regulatory regime. In many states, the system allows local governments to grant effective monopolies each to a cable video and telephone provider. So many communities have, at best, two internet providers, and cable video service is far from universal. So a lot of places only have DSL over copper phone lines and that's rarely at broadband speeds. In my community the monopoly phone provider is bankrupt and has not repaired lines, meaning not even DSL is available to some homes.

My impression is that it's a mix -- telecoms only want to upgrade wireline infrastructure where it's profitable (so, more affluent areas), and in my experience, in SF, there is some degree of NIMBYism about internet infrastructure at the street level ("green boxes" and the like) so even if the telecom is willing it can be hard to get consensus from the neighbors.

The most valuable and scarce resource for many parents right now is time. Even parents who theoretically have "time" due to a recent layoff or furlough are under stress of trying to apply for various benefits while paying the bills somehow, so the task of organizing their kids' home academic schedule is just daunting, leaving aside the issues of lack of internet access or computers.

It was challenging for me and my spouse, despite both having jobs that switch to WFH and flexible schedules, plenty of computers, and internet access.

It's in the middle of a huge city. If nothing else, they could use mobile data hotspots. The school district has been handing those out to kids with no stable internet at home where I live in Oregon, or trying to, at least.

Yup! All parks are closed, but you can't even tell if you drove by say MacArthur park right now.

https://www.laparks.org/covid-19

You have my sympathy. Two things are working against you: 1. You are being asked to do something you did not sign up for, and 2. You were blind-sided and did not have time to prepare.

We home schooled our child from the time we noticed pre-school was not exactly going great, until the day they left for college. (They were given a choice at middle school and high school to stop homeschooling, but they chose to stick with it.) We chose, we had time to prepare, and yet it was work.

Some things that make homeschooling easier: 1. Adjusting parent work/career to make time. Unfortunately, not so much an option for you. 2. Coops groups. Not an option for anybody during lock-down. 3. Curriculum themes. The way home-school parents handle multiple kids in different grades without going crazy is to pick a theme and assign appropriate work to each kid, example: The next 6 weeks everybody's world history is going to be South America, so 2nd grader does 2nd grade work product, middle schooler does middle school work product, high schooler does high school work product. But as a parent, at least the search space for resources is cut by 2/3's over having everyone do something different. I suspect your school isn't thinking that one through for you, either.

Frankly, if your school district lets you get away with it, it might be a good chance to try "unschooling" for a while. Unschooling is: Study what you want, but you must work on something. It will be an opportunity for the kids to learn how to be more self directed. ("unschooling" should not be confused with "raised by wolves" -- I've seen that, too, call unschooling, but the result isn't quite the same.)

First grade is a little young for that to work well, though, I must admit, unless they have already developed a reading habit. But heck, maybe even that is OK -- "read what you want, but you must read for X minutes." Kindling a love of reading at that age goes a long way later on.

Anyway, hang in. De-stressing is an important goal. I remember when mine was little and just starting violin -- at some point when the stress-meter was climbing, I decided it was more import that practice be fun every day than to accomplish everything that the teacher assigned every week. That was the right call, trust me.

Between your comment and the GP, it's easy to see that any "distance learning" is only a stopgap that we've been forced into, and is not scalable or desirable for any length of time.

I've noticed the same thing but haven't been able to come up with a solution that isn't just saying "stop being such absolute jackasses when it comes to communication, schools" (and then having them actually do that) or yet another communication channel that may or may not take off enough to make me some money but, however well-functioning and well-intended, won't actually solve the problem, instead adding to it by creating one more way for schools to disjointedly spam parents.

Public magnet schools exist in many districts.

I'm trying to imagine the amount of added car traffic if you add 10 - 20 miles to the average commute.

Canvas is absolutely fantastic for my university, I think the player to watch is Instructure (Canvas’ creator) for either more Canvas features targeting secondary and primary students or a new product in the space.