This started as a comment in the megathread but got long so I decided to make it it’s own post. Obviously covid makes this different, but for general purposes, I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it till I die, please don’t homeschool your kids
I was homeschooled from early in elementary school until halfway through my sophomore year of high school. The reason I joined high school is because I was so depressed and lonely I wanted to die, and I knew my education had been neglected for years, so I begged my parents to put me in public school. Basically the only thing my parents kept up with was math and that’s only because they had me in online math classes.
And of the homeschooling parents I knew, mine were some of the best ones as far as actually educating their children go. Mild neglect with some basic math and science from atheist parents is worlds better than the psycho Christian “education” some people I knew got.
But even with all that the education was the smaller problem. Turns out math is the only thing that actually builds on itself over time in the American education system, everything else just restarts but slightly more complicated when you get to high school.
The bigger problem was how alone I was and how stunted it made my social skills, something I’m still dealing with now and I’m in fucking grad school. Kids and teenagers need to be around people their own age. I straight up did not learn how to function properly in social situations. I almost got the shit beat out of me in my first week in high school for calling a football player a dumbass. If adults said things to me that were mildly accusatory I’d cry, but also I had no concept of not saying shit so I’d call out adults for any minor system issue or other problem completely out of their control which most people just found annoying. I had so much trouble understanding fairly basic social interactions.
My younger brother was homeschooled from after kindergarten all the way until his senior year of high school, which he then dropped out of. He was more stunted both socially and educationally than I was, and started smoking weed nearly every day when he was around 15 to cope. It also definitely didn’t help that my whole family is chock full of mental illness. I think he did just start at community college though, which I’m super proud of.
So yeah. Rant over. Don’t home school your kids. It’s shitty.
We homeschooled our kids last year because of covid. We were going to send them back to public school this year until delta hit. We can't send them back now because it clearly isn't safe. As soon as they can get vaccinated and it's safe, we're sending them back. If it never becomes safe, we're going to move to a different country.
My kids had been in public school in two different countries for years before then and did well socializing with their peers. They still hang out with kids in the neighborhood every day, sometimes like voraciously for hours, and they also watch TV and play video games.
We use Khan Academy to keep them up to speed with their grade when it comes to math. We're reading and discussing A People's History of the United States and also watching Bald and Bankrupt for social studies. (I know the guy is problematic but the fact that he just walks around random countries talking with random people goes a long way to contradicting the bloodthirstiness of the corporate media IMO.) We write and read whatever the hell we want for English and listened to the Infinite Monkey Cage today for science.
I've worked in education for years and also subbed at the local elementary school. Homeschooling when it's done right is almost like just hiring an expensive tutor who actually gives a shit about your kids. The teachers at the local school aren't bad but there's only so much you can do when you're with twenty kids in a classroom. The socialization aspect is undoubtedly the most important part of public school but of course that's also a double-edged sword. I've personally observed that "kids these days" are generally (not always) less cruel to one another than they were when I was in school.
That being said, your experiences are valid and I'm sorry for what you went through. I think it's good to keep this shit in mind and to remember the consequences of spending years being isolated from your peers.
oh my god that guy is absolutely fucking disgusting
I can speak Spanish fluently and thought the way people in his LatAm videos reacted to him made me uneasy (sex tourism is very common in Mexico) since they occasionally gave each other that particular look that says "dude this guy is fucking weird". This was way before I knew how insanely awful he is. His friends are even worse...
Good on you for showing them other countries but man that guy is GROSS
Yeah he definitely manages to act creepy around women in almost every episode.