I will never understand this attitude. Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? How can we possibly reframe this as a "horror". The horror is this idea that personal identity can go on indefinitely. Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. None of this is being "tragically normalized". What's being normalized is the idea that we can have everything we want all the time forever without any spiritual or material costs.
Because they're horrific tragedies that we should be fighting tooth and nail until they're extinguished and nobody ever has to deal with them again. They should be consigned to the history books.
> Aging is a process of coming to terms with death.
Aging is a biological problem that we continue to debug. And nothing should make us "come to terms" with being obliterated. If someone is attacking you, you don't "come to terms" with your impending injury or death, you fight back.
When a problem has thus far been a seemingly immutable property of life, it can be difficult to envision a world where that property has been overcome. It can be difficult to even see it as a problem. And it's understandable that people's first instinct is to somehow justify the status quo, that there must be a good reason that 150,000 people die every day. One step towards solving the problem is to reset that expectation, to get people to recognize the problem as a problem rather than a "fact". In the meantime, progress will continue to be made by people who see it as a problem, but far too slowly without more widespread support. Every day longer it takes is 150,000 people lost.
Old age and death is still the number one tool for solving: - empires and tyrants
- outdated societal opinions and prejudices (racism/sexism/etc)
- locked in privilege and wealth
- ossification of social roles
- stagnation within fields and industry ("Science progresses one funeral at a time")
We have no truly effective tools for these problems, except wait for people to die. I'd be much more supportive of ending aging if we had anything that worked.
Or at least that line of thinking becomes very difficult to resist. I still want to promote the research, but like AI progress I hope we think about the second-order effects sufficiently along the way.
One of the cliches around progress in certain fields is that it requires the death of those unwilling to change. Would immortality slow down progress in those fields? Would we have to place more "term limits" on those in authority (whether political or in organizations).
You and your beloved ones are going to die. Just accept it. This is as big of a fact as gravity given our scientific understanding. It's not about magic cure. It's just that on long enough time probability of your pattern being destroyed goes to one, whether you are a living organism, a program or some handy-wavy. That's just physics.
And if you really want to fight biology, why put longevity over decreasing suffering? So far, I would argue, artificial lifespan extension increased physical suffering despite enormous progress that we made in terms of multiple forms anesthesiology.
The important thing to remember, which I think all too many people forget, is that it is not a trick question."
That is far from clear. It is even far from clear that this is true all else being equal, and all else is definitely not equal. Extending longevity exacerbates the strain on global resources caused by overpopulation -- most notably at the moment, the capacity of the planet to absorb carbon emissions, but that's a detail. Exponential growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. If carbon weren't the limiting factor, it would be something else.
But we humans were designed to die. Our evolutionary purpose is to raise children to the point where they are able to have children of their own. A longer lifespan than that doesn't advance our reproductive fitness, and so we're not designed to live any longer than that. So even if we could tweak our bodies to live longer, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would be healthy for our minds and souls.
If people had discovered 3x lifespans and birth rates were thirded in the 1900s, we’d be living near-ossified lifestyles (and other things) from back then.
Also, the longer you live the more mental trauma there is to deal with. One lifetime is enough. As it is we have enough people who slowly decline and go crazy.
I love life (I've been fortunate to live in health and relative privilege) and would very much prefer an additional 150 years before eternal nothingness, assuming sound mind and body. It's not clear to me what spiritual downsides I would experience.
Is it wrong to repair someone's heart, brain, joints, skin, bones, kidneys, liver or muscles? If not, why is it wrong to prevent them degenerating in the first place?
It worries me that even now you have rich people that are 70 and are still trying to make more money abusing other people. Imagine if you could keep your wealth for 50 more years. Further more if money is the gateway to 50 more years. Money would be even more important than it is now.
I really don't want to significantly expand lifespans unless we can keep things fair for everybody.
Death is the greatest weakness of humanity, and to think otherwise is fatalist. We don't have to live eighty years at best and die. We can do better.
If everyone on this planet had solving death as their single-minded focus, we'd accomplish it within our lifetimes.
This is a particularly advanced form of wishful thinking.
Science advances one funeral at a time. ~ Max Planck
I'd add to that that it's not only science that advances in this way.
Attempting to preserve the status quo of aging and death is the same thing in a more roundabout way.
- Alzheimer's?
- Cancer?
- Arthritis?
Otherwise it's just crab bucket mentality.
Thing is: public schools here outright suck, teach lots of bullshit and are dangerous.
Private schools are crazy expensive, and although they are more useful they still teach a lot of bullshit.
Also the educational style of all schools here is outright awful, there is an article from 1950s I believe written by Richard Feynman and it still applies 100%
Then I grew up and met people who went to public school. Holy cow I can’t believe people think it’s ok to put their kids through that! I can’t believe we collectively accept children being exposed to the violence and other problems that are pervasive there! It’s not surprising so many people become criminals now.
But on the flip-side, would you want to go your entire life without facing any conflicts?
FWIW, I was bullied in middle school, and pretty much had to fight my way through. As in fist fighting. As an adult, I don't tolerate any bullshit - and have no problems saying so , if I'm ever in a situation. I'm not sure I'd be the same person, if I hadn't gone through the things I did (not saying that bullying or fighting is good, just that it molded me into a person with extremely low tolerance for BS and a$$holes)
I ask in good faith, not to mock you or anything - mostly because I've heard a wide range of similar claims.
(I do think that the educational style of many public schools is horrendous though, as it follows the old factory-line model, where you try to fit all kids into some mold, and "educate" them as fast as possible. When the reality is that there's no one-size-its-all educational model. It's highly individual, and must be tailored / optimized for each pupil, if possible.)
> Another problem for Brazil is that it is one of the few countries which does not have good basic educational statistics. Nevertheless, it is clear that too few children go to primary school. To make matters worse, more than a third of children repeat a grade at least once in primary or secondary school. This is particularly true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This poor performance at school is linked to a high drop-out rate. Only 88.7% complete basic education and there are more than 600,000 primary age children are out of school.
> For those who do remain at school, performance is poor, reflecting poor school quality. The OECD’s internationally respected PISA survey (Program for International Student Assessment) put Brazil near the bottom of the list of 65 countries taking part, making it comparable to Albania, Jordan and Tunisia.
[0] https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/publication/brazil-persp...
Most of what people do here is just write down from book to a notebook word to word. The books are horrible too (some published more than a decade ago in subjects where relevancy matters a lot) with no clarification or update from the teacher. Standard examination is not useful atleast on a school level. Many schools allow people to cheat openly and some of them even change the written answers of students (they tell them to leave it blank if you don't know the answers). This happens till 9th grade. After which, schools have less power over grading but they still get to hand out some marks which they will do for every poor student anyway. The cut off rate is extremely low to pass (around 33%). And it's also blurry because you have reservation (affirmative action based on your caste) so the end result is different for each person.
To over simplify, take three variables. Assign 1x, 1.5x and 2x. Now calculate admission, job application (government), taxes, fees, etc rate for different people by multiplying by them.
Most schools run an after school program or similar where they help you train for the exam. Although, most of it is just giving out a sample paper to what will come in the school exams. Pretty much most students will go there if the school is rich or if it is poor, then they directly go to tuition under subject teacher.
Most schools in rural, suburban, etc are repurposed houses.
As for teachers, mostly fresh college students, mothers and people who are waiting to clear their government exam or similar. The pay ranges anywhere from 4k-20k per month (upto $310).
Periods are stacked in the most unproductive way possible. No breaks and are very short - 30-40 mins with too much subject/context switching.
Majority of kids will be abused emotionally and physically at some point. Indian schools have a mentality of class punishment so you get punished for something you didn't do often. Typical physical abuse include beating palm of your hand with a wooden or metal ruler, making you stand outside with hands up in the air or sitting in a chicken position. There are of course some extreme corporal punishments. That includes stripping (only boys), making you run outside on the ground (45C+) for hours, telling other students to beat you for being bad and public shaming tactics.
Kids are also indoctrinated with politics all the time. I mean, we have an hour long assembly to repeat how much we are proud of our country and india number one in the morning every day.
Parents usually have no idea about their own kids and are toxic (reason - poverty).
Given economic condition of India, income inequality, social mobility and unemployment. I don't think a reasonable person would wanna go through this. It's not like you are likely to have a first class life easily even if you somehow pushed your way through.
I can expand more but that's the general overview.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_...
2. Government heavily interfere with what is taught in classrooms regarding some subjects, most notoriously the government is quite heavy handed in anti-monarchy rethoric, I was actually shocked when I was in my 25s and started to find out a lot of stuff I learned as a kid were not just misrepresentations or wrong interpretation of things, but outright lies and propaganda, one interesting example: schooling here blame a lot of slavery on monarchy and nobility in general, meanwhile the monarchs actually wrote anti-slavery essays, and even made a deal with England at the time authorizing them to attack slaver ships, at some point the government even made it clearer, told England to treat all slavers as pirates, and gave them permission to even attack docked slaver ships freely. Also schools here teach government was "absolutist", but it wasn't, only reason monarch was letting england screw with ships, is because whenever he tried to make a law ending slavery, with nobility support, the liberals would vote AGAINST it (and mostly out of stupidity too, farms that stopped using slaves had bigger profits, maintaining the slaves was more expensive than paying the tiny wages they were paying to the immigrants).
3. Schooling here has a sort of mandatory political bias, not just as in... most teachers being left leaning (something kinda normal in most of western world), but as in the government explicity dictating that certain subjects need to base their theories on Antonio Gramsci, there is some infamous youtube videos where right-wing teachers argue against that with public officials, in one of the videos a teacher outright ask an official what about the parents rights to not have the kid be forced to learn that, and the official replies that the state knows best, that if they don't want their kids to be indoctrinated, they have to pull the kids from school, and face the consequences.
4. Schools here also teach a lot of useless stuff, with teachers insisting you will use all of it... but I guess this applies to most of the world.
If you repeatedly attempt it I presume? I highly doubt that they'd send your kids to an orphanage after the first offense.
> public schools here outright suck, teach lots of bullshit
Bullshit such as what? (if I might ask)
IMO, although homeschooling is great for some kids, the cons of legalizing it far outweigh the pros. One of the most important aspects of schools is to let kids interact with other kids from different (social, economic, religious, etc.) backgrounds. Homeschooling should be banned for the same reason that religious schools should be banned, i.e., to avoid abuse, indoctrination, and segregation of kids from different (social, economic, religious, etc.) backgrounds.
If we want to allow brighter kids to learn faster then the focus should be on improving schools, not on abandoning them.
This statement both doesn't reflect the actual statistics around homeschool and private school outcomes, and makes the false assumption that public schools don't indoctrinate (let alone abuse) their students.
> If we want to allow brighter kids to learn faster then the focus should be on improving schools, not on abandoning them.
Keeping kids (and parents) trapped in a broken system in the hopes that someday the system will be fixed is pointlessly cruel. It also denies public schools one of the most important tools for facilitating improvement: competition.
kind of a blunt take here but yeah, homeschooling will do that because its limited to what your parents know. Public schools work to immerse kids in a diverse environment with many people from many different walks of life. they work to build soft skills like empathy, listening, and conflict resolution. she says she taught herself "calculus and probability and statistics, and French literature and history" betraying her heritage. The wealthy are notorious francophiles (Fussell, Paul, "Class: A Guide Through the American Status System")
Homeschooling may have played a part in her success, but money likely played an even more prominent role in getting a twelve year old into UCSF and MIT from half a world away. The average homeschooled kid is much more likely to miss social cues, stumble through a difficult interaction with feckless ineptitude, or even parrot their parents own myopic stereotypes or falsehoods. Schools may teach "bullshit" to some, but they also arm kids with critical thinking skills. the conflicting role of educator, caregiver, and lawgiver projected by homeschool parents virtually guarantees kids will never rise to challenge the education theyre given. Theyll learn only what theyre told.
Curious if this is something you have direct experience with/referencing a study or if you're just repeating the commonly held trope. I work at a school that has welcomed a large number of former home schoolers and I find your comment contrary to my experience with dozen of home school kids.
Additionally, describing public schools as a place where empathy, listening, and conflict resolution happens is counter to my experience working with public school districts. Genuinely interested to learn where you're coming from with your comment.
And we're not really sticklers when it comes to behavior, we mostly just want them to not be rude and to think about other people when they do things that impact other people, and we have not found that kids who attend public school are especially likely to possess those qualities. (I also went to public school and spent a good part of my early adulthood unlearning crappy social behavior that was learned in school).
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Also, homeschooling doesn't mean you can only learn from your parents. You can use any other resource that's available to you.
> Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries.
So why is this a distinctly American problem? If we understand the answer to that question, might that help us solve the problem?
"The average homeschooled kid". Stereotypes. Hm.
You missed the next sentence which seems to contradict the argument you're making. There's absolutely no evidence that the author is missing "critical thinking skills". It sounds like the positive reinforcement from the father created an idea that anything is possible (which probably is missing from most people who go through the traditional education system).
No one is arguing that all homeschooling is great. It's going to depend on the teachers/parents. This seems like an example where it worked out really well.
Public schools are a reflection of the communities they're placed in and in much of rural America diversity isn't at play.
Astra Taylor's response to a critique (of the paywalled article below) demonstrates the nuance (https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/learning-in-...)
> I actually chose to go to public high school in Georgia for three years, where I saw the good and bad first hand. Unlike Goldstein, who glories in having “benefited from 13 years of public education in one of the most diverse and progressive school districts in the United States,” the school I attended was predominantly African-American and viciously segregated, with the white kids funneled into advanced and gifted courses while everyone else, the vast majority, languished. Thus, in my essay I ask, “Are schools social levelers or do they reinforce the class pyramid by tracking and sorting children from a young age?” Any honest progressive needs to admit the answer is both
Your take is kind of obvious, but it's too monolithic. There are certainly some of my old friends that match your description to the T: socially awkward, insular knowledge, holding onto their parent's religious extremes.
But they also have siblings that are polar opposites, for example one got a PhD in Evolutionary Bio (much to their parents ire).
I think you're absolutely right that money and class are at the center of this, 'yacht schooling' is definitely a thing and their experiences should not be extrapolated generally.
Paywalled, but these stories also worth a read and N+! is well worth the money. * https://nplusonemag.com/issue-33/essays/homeschool/ * https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/essays/unschooling/
It sounds like Laura was from academic branch, where her parents were probably very engaged, and thought they could do a better job than the school system--which is great.
My parents, and most of their friends who homeschooled were from the religious branch of the movement, which is fairly large in the US. Their main motivation was to basically prevent the school system from teaching us things they didn't approve of, like evolution, etc. Of course, we learned about evolution, but from a very different (and very incorrect) perspective.
Regardless, we still took standardized tests, and performed really well on them every year. Overall I did fine in college--aside from a few academic blind spots, and I'm doing fine as a programmer today. The social stuff was a steep learning curve once I hit college, but I made it.
I will say there are a number of people I know who didn't "make it out". College can be a really big jump for a lot of these kids.
It's too bad there aren't more things like that.
It's not for everyone, but I've met a lot more homeschooled people since, and I've never met someone who's wished they hadn't been.
My parents' goal for our (me and my siblings') educations was basically just to teach us how to think. They cared a lot more about what we were like at 25 than what we'd be like at 15. I found this to be super freeing, and something I valued a lot.
We didn't have much money growing up, and my dad worked 3 jobs so that my mom could stay home and homeschool us. My mom was actually a public school teacher, and wrote a paper in college on why homeschooling should be illegal. I have always loved her willingness to change her mind on that once she realized that public school wasn't the best fit for us.
My parents both sort of split the "education" responsibilities, and they really tried to empower us to view learning as a journey we could join them on vs. something that was compulsively forced upon us. So, whenever possible we would learn things from the "real world" vs. a textbook or classroom setting. I remember when we were learning about the pulmonary system, my mom convinced a local butcher to give her some cow lungs so that she could show us how inflating / deflating lungs worked. When we learned about the founding of America, she put us in a van and drove from Florida to all 13 colonies and visited all the historical sites.
I found the transition to traditional school and then a big public university with 50k students to be quite easy. I also played a lot of sports growing up, and I find that sports / music / other forms of community tend to give kids plenty of socialization, and the "homeschoolers are socially awkward" meme is a bit of a myth in most cases.
Anyways, it was hugely positive for me. It's not for everyone, and requires a specific type of parent with a specific type of motivations, but I think it can be incredible for many families.
An extremely intelligent friend of mine is one of those people, and he has hang ups about it.
Note that there are good home schooling experiences as well, but there may be some selection bias regarding the stories we typically hear.
The worst outcome I've seen has been my sister, who is in her thirties and rarely leaves my father's house.
While homeschooling isn't the right fit for everyone, I was homeschooled and it had a huge impact on me. My habits now for constant learning, working to complete tasks quickly, building projects with my hands (remodeling, woodworking, etc), and my desire to start companies all came from the time and energy that my parents put into crafting a unique education for me.
I'm so excited to see more and more parents considering homeschooling their kids.
I don’t mean they make kids into automatons, but there is a tendency to _tell_ kids this is right and that is wrong along ideological lines without allowing kids to discover those things for themselves.
I’m talking about things like tax policy, education, religion, government, etc.
For example, kids are indoctrinated to believe if they get good grades they can go to college and they’ll be set. That government is there to take care of you, that the education system is good, etc.
So these kids graduate, go to college, university and then wonder why after doing all that their humanities or business classes don’t land them jobs.
They should be allowed to discover more and question the whole system more. Some should be tracked for vocational schools rather than everyone expecting they are fit to work anywhere they desire... its unrealistic.
I grew up to truly love learning and be excited for our weekly trips to the library to get more books. Then when I had access to the internet I spent so much time learning code and design. My parents taught me how to learn and then gave me access to whatever I needed (mostly just the library and a computer).
Who knows were these habits come from. There are many people who went to regular schools and share these exact same habits.
> I really felt like I got a cheat code to life early on. It was like being Ben Franklin’s daughter or something... When I first met Cynthia Kenyon... I was 12. She very kindly offered for me to just work in her lab as a normal intern,
who do you think does the homeschooling?
I think it's important for parents to realize that a lot of these choices are mostly about enjoyment and convenience, and they don't need to beat themselves up if they feel like they are failing because they can't put a square peg through a round hole.
Although, that said, I think one trend I do see is that successful people had the ability to move on when they were ready. I for one was lucky enough to get to go to college early (I hated high school). I can't think of how many kids had to be stuck in the system because they were forced into a timetable.
Stop punishing kids. Stop grading them like factory workers or defective products. Stop putting them all in one classroom. Change their course work to be more interactive and make an environment where people can naturally be social...
I follow this Japanese light novel where they simulate real world in a school setting. The school campus has everything - malls, bars, gaming areas, hair saloons, library, parks and everything else you would visit outside the campus. Students are given monthly allowance based on the performance of their classes and live inside the campus until graduation on their own. I wonder how feasible it would be to create something like that.
People who think that getting bullied or living in a toxic place when you have no experience in dealing with it is great make me sad. Not everyone has a decent life at home (some have dysfunctional families). For those people, it's misery on top of misery. And then there are folks with autism, bipolar and ADHD.
I was dealing with both. Broken for 2 years now. I don't have any goals, dreams or plans that I had before. Now I have to fight against pessimism at every point and is getting harder to socialize each passing days.
I have a different outlook on life now that people find very controversial or against their moral compass. But I can justify it. The disconnection keeps growing even if you quit.
Life gets better motto stings and disconnect me from others because I can't remember a single nice memory that isn't reading something obscure on the internet or communicating with other internet dwellers.
I have to ask people how they feel about something, what their thought process is and why/how. I can't understand it. I have difficulty understanding your common moral compass. I am not joking when I tell you to explain small gestures and facial expressions. And I feel sad too. I just can't show it always. I don't need to cry or look dead serious to say something serious.
> I have a different outlook on life now that people find very controversial or against their moral compass. But I can justify it. The disconnection keeps growing even if you quit.
> Life gets better motto stings and disconnect me from others because I can't remember a single nice memory that isn't reading something obscure on the internet or communicating with other internet dwellers.
I am not sure if this is the right thing to say or not, but it seems like you may be stuck in a negative feedback loop. You are getting validation from people on the internet, and it is creating resentment for people in real life.
It sounds like the novel is about the nostalgia of a time in our lives when we were forced to spend time with others. I think that is a pretty familiar sentiment for a lot of people.
That's really rough, and I'm sorry you have to go through it. There are people out there that are understanding, and I hope you're able to find them sooner than later. I also hope you're able to find more things that bring you joy.
Each day I strive not to become a zombie. It is easy to live in fantasies, dreams, movies, there is no exit there.
My way out is to resolve inner conflict by singing. Start from some truth - we cry when hurt, sometime can stop it, sometimes not. But there is a need. So find some really private place - forest, bathroom - and try to allow that voice. One note would be enough. It will sound awful. Do not be hard on yourself. It is mismatch between reality and expectations that hurts. No need to push it harder. Thoughts stream through mind, all the lies and unjustice, I try to not interfere. Finally there is a match between thoughts and reality - pain and support. Hours later it sounds like lullaby and I can finally see beautiful forest around.
It is hard to describe, previous attempt https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269320
This is the part where I'm going to need some academical research. I really don't know either way - but I wouldn't take your word for it (Of course you could be researching this subject for years but you have only presented me with anecdotal evidence, which can be explained by selection bias).
Homeschooling also just seems unsustainable. Modern society generally requires two parents to be working. Can an average family afford to homeschool their children? At least in the USA, most indications give a pretty firm "no."
That being said, I really enjoyed this article. People definitely should have more control over their education and how it relates to their own children's needs.
The fact of the matter is that the implicit assumption of many pro-homeschoolers is that most professional educators - either for individual or systemic reasons - are also not good educators, and would rather take their chances. I can't entirely blame them.
But even if none of those things is true, I keep hearing about classroom size as one of the key determinants of educational outcomes. Well, what's the classroom size for a homeschool? It's however many kids you have. Let's use the standard family size, 2.3 kids. The average school classroom size is around 20 in the US. Well, how much does 2.3 vs. 20 make up for the parent not being a great educator? And what if the person with 20 isn't a great educator either?
Most teachers aren’t great educators either, speaking as someone who did it for five years. Homeschooling parents have fewer students and care much, much more about them.
I feel like this is a strong case of "what is best for society is not best for each and every individual".
If allowing homeschooling will help 100 kids to learn faster and be happier, while at the same time causing another 1000 kids become socially isolated by giving their parents the authority to more easily cut them off from the rest of society and indoctrinate them, then is that trade-off really worth it?
(not sure how to verify but that's the email associated w all my public stuff / twitter posts so hopefully that's enough)
Do you have pointers to research linking liver function to diabetes and perhaps to aging research.
It’s known that non alcoholic fatty liver is common in people who will develop type 2 diabetes. But the link is not well understood. (There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on how the two are linked?).
Any solid references would be helpful, I’ve only found older nature reviews from 2006 and 2010. Maybe that’s the state of understanding but curious to get any additional pointers.
Asking for a friend :)
What if advancement depends on the death of people with outdated ideas?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm
An idea that sees its support changing substantially faster than 0.7% per year is not primarily driven by older members of the public dying.
The original Civil Rights movement, the fight for gay marriage, cannabis legalization -- all of these saw public acceptance shift much faster than population turnover can account for. Do you have examples in mind of trends that actually required the die-off of older people?
Another one is dictators. It seems like it took Franco's death for things to change in Spain, and Salazar's brain hemorrhage to change things in Portugal. Would Mubarak have been able to control the situation in Egypt if he was physically younger?
Science progresses one funeral at a time, markets function by companies dying out, at the very fundamental biological reproduction relies on death.
If you think 70 year old politicians and university deans are corrupt, wait for the 400 year old boomers. The end of death is essentially the beginning of stagnation. It's a libertarian fantasy pushed by Thiel et al, because death is the one last thing these people can't buy themselves out off.
Death puts a natural end to even the worst individuals, wiping the slate clean is, sadly but necessarily, what keeps our species and our culture moving .
I think the homeschooling is likely second to being rich in terms of her world view and success.
For instance, in Seattle there is a push from activists to introduce progressive politics into schoolrooms, to influence children's culture and values beyond what is appropriate. It started with the NAACP pressuring Seattle Public Schools to introduce ethnic studies into their K-12 curriculum (https://www.king5.com/article/news/education/seattle-school-...). Then the school board proposed converting subjects like math into propaganda channels for social justice politics (https://reason.com/2019/10/22/seattle-math-oppressive-cultur...). Now they're planning to include gender identity material as early as Kindergarten (https://mynorthwest.com/1676789/rantz-mandatory-sex-ed-kinde...). In each instance, I see that the parents' role is being overridden by the state, going far beyond the mandate of core education and clearly into the realm of controversial politics.
I am not trying to just single out Seattle or progressive politics, mind you. It's just what I'm most familiar with. In Arkansas some schools teach that the age of Earth is a controversial topic (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...). And outside the US as well, governments use education as a means to undermine parents and steal away their children's minds, turning them into willing adopters of the government's values/culture/politics (https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-educa...).
Homeschooling and school choice more broadly (like charter schools) are the antidote to having children propagandized. Homeschooling is generally very successful, to the point that it is viewed by some as a threat to public education (https://reason.com/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-...) and now there are activist researchers claiming that homeschooling is vector for child abuse despite evidence to the contrary (https://www.educationnext.org/harvard-law-professors-attack-...). I hope people take note and fight to retain their rights as parents.
Western culture (my personal background) has seen shifts in answers to this question over the past centuries... and not in isolation from other shifts in viewpoints about cultural interactions.
Are we going in a direction that is good? All I can say for sure is that it becomes increasingly easy for me to focus on myself and current times while ignoring children and what they will grow into, and increasingly harder for me to understand the reasons my parents, grandparents, etc thought and reasoned the way they did. Again, a slice of the world, but if my experience is widespread, that surely affects how decisions about education are currently being made.
It posits the idea that the way of thinking back then was different, because they had to overcome different cognitive challenges from us today. This would shape how people back then viewed the world.
Good advice!
I don't particularly recommend it for anyone without substantial need. I would put genius-level children at that level. We weren't geniuses.
I can imagine an... alternative... schooling coop which would work well. But there are whole volumes of good behavior that I had to intake as a teen & young adult that homeschooling had no ability to teach me.
Parents of homeschooled kids don't notice, I think. Because this is about peer behavior and interaction. Not child-parent interaction.
I was under the impression that this runs contrary to current thinking.
i.e. Tell kids they're the best and they stop taking risks for fear of failure. Rather encourage effort & persistence.
Anyway...sometimes I think the whole elite private schooling model are the sweet spot. Actual effort goes into the teaching without the social isolation that (often) comes with home schooling.
Stay involved. That's what homeschooling (done well) forces you to do. Ask questions, allow failures, try (you WILL fail) to practice detachment, and understand that you do not.
At school, after lectures, we have to do homework. It's a practice to get a deeper understanding of the knowledge. Then we have to take test. It's a validation of our understanding. People certainly cheat their ways through college. But if you are into learning, you can learn a lot.
Laura Deming mentioned that she had a hard time with entropy. I think this is because of not having a formal education. Entropy is an overloaded term. It means different things in different fields. In physics, it means one thing. In information theory, it means another thing. If Laura had gone to a university to study the concepts in different classes, she would have grasped the concepts. Laura is likely a generalist thinker, polymath. That's why she has a hard time digging into deep concepts. To really understand them, you need to practice (homework) and validate (test).
I work in cryptocurrency space. Vitalik is another generalist, polymath thinker. He makes some wild claims like quantum computer can break Proof of Work. If you study Computer Science, you'd see how dubious this claim is.
You don't know what you don't know.
Schools are good for teaching you what you don't know. Both Vitalik and Laura come out of the Thiel Fellowship. When you are young and got chosen by a billionaire, it may have gotten you hype up about your intellect. You buy into your billionaire's view. You think professors are idiots. Nowadays, social media give people a microphone. So they get even more indulgence. They see themselves already successful.
I think the young generation, like Laura and Vitalik, is talented. But they live in the fame bubble too early. Albert Einstein had this problem. He was an early achiever. He made his important discoveries when he was young. Those achievements became burden. He had a hard time with quantum mechanics. He spent endless time with the theory of everything. He was miserable in his later life.
I teach my kids at home after their public school time. When they grow up, I hope there're still good universities for them to go. Go to school, take some test, you'd see how much you really understand.
