Yes, that’s the one! That’s the downside of the increased variance caused by decentralization. And the upside is someone like JS Mill sitting next to his father translating Greek at four.
There need to be subtle controls to sort the one from the other – and maybe that’s a bit of a pipe dream since these controls would need to be done by human beings. In the same way as the steel man version of education is a pipe dream because it needs to be implemented by human beings.
The accountability is tricky: too little and you end up with the quotes above; too much and you end up forcing everyone to follow the same plan, whether at home or in learning centers or schools, leaving no room for innovation and individual needs. Parts of the US have tended toward the first error, Europe has tended toward the second. I have less insight into other parts of the globe.
And the upside is someone like JS Mill sitting next to his father translating Greek at four.
Technically, this is perfectly legal even in countries without homeschooling. The actual suffering only starts at six. :D
The accountability is tricky: too little and you end up with the quotes above; too much and you end up forcing everyone to follow the same plan
My first idea was to give kids exams at the end of each year, and allow homeschooling to those who overall results are not worse than the average results of kids who attend school. Because, intuitively, they don’t do worse than the school system on average. At the same time, the kids would get feedback on their abilities. It would be flexible—the better the school system, the more difficult to avoid it, but that’s kinda okay then; and the worse the school system, the easier to avoid it. It would also allow smart kids to follow their own plan, because doing worse in a subject or two is allowed as long as you excel in the remaining ones.
This does not account for the type of abuse that is unrelated to educational outcomes. Also, social skills.
It also does not account for innate differences in intelligence, or learning disabilities. Kids who are retarded or dyslexic would have to attend school. Kids with high intelligence, mostly neglected by their parents but still with some access to online education, could pass the tests… low below their personal potential, but still barely above the population average.
How about a compromise? A month or two of mandatory school at the beginning of every year, then allow homeschooling for the rest of the year. Exams at the end of the year. Though I suspect this might actually make everyone unhappy.
Alternatively, some kind of mandatory “socialization that is not school” for homeschoolers, one or two months every year. Maybe mixed up with the exams somehow. Like, kids would be together, with some teachers, just talking about what they learned at home previously, then write some exams. (Logistical problem, what about those teachers who only have a job one or two months every year? Maybe we could use summer holidays for this? But homeschoolers also want some summer vacation.)
For example: looking at kids that teach themselves to read, my impression is that the timing of literacy follows a normal distribution with the median at about 8 years. There are several upsides to learning reading on your own. And kids that learn at 10 or so do not seem to become weaker readers. So check-ins would have to be sensitive that kids develop at different speeds. Implementing reading tests at 6 or 7 would lead the majority to have to learn reading through coercion, which I think we should limit. I’d rather see a test at 10 or so, to catch kids that are on the later part of the bell curve.
If you do frequent and comprehensive tests, then you turn homes into schools, instead of allowing them to be a part of the learning system. I think tests need to be limited to the most crucial skills, likely just arithmetic and reading. Adding more tests limits the time kids can spend diversifying into their unique interests, and seeing after their individual needs.
Edit: I think portfolios are enough to determine if a kid is developing. If the portfolio doesn’t help the evaluator judge how the kid is doing, one can do diagnostic tests. And admission to University should to a large degree be reserved for students that perform well on a standardized aptitude test; that tends to be fairer to disadvantaged groups.
And socialization is usually not a problem, but one needs ways of catching the kids that do end up. I’m not sure how to make that fine-grained enough. Mandatory two-month socialization seems a bit too coarse, though of course better than what we see in countries that allow no freedom from schooling. And I have no better solution for how to catch the kids from homeschooling recovery right of the bat.
But I think the most important thing is for kids to have someone outside the family that spends time with them and get a feeling for their growth and situation. That can probably catch a lot of problems, without being logistically hard or overly controlling.
Yes, that’s the one! That’s the downside of the increased variance caused by decentralization. And the upside is someone like JS Mill sitting next to his father translating Greek at four.
There need to be subtle controls to sort the one from the other – and maybe that’s a bit of a pipe dream since these controls would need to be done by human beings. In the same way as the steel man version of education is a pipe dream because it needs to be implemented by human beings.
The accountability is tricky: too little and you end up with the quotes above; too much and you end up forcing everyone to follow the same plan, whether at home or in learning centers or schools, leaving no room for innovation and individual needs. Parts of the US have tended toward the first error, Europe has tended toward the second. I have less insight into other parts of the globe.
Technically, this is perfectly legal even in countries without homeschooling. The actual suffering only starts at six. :D
My first idea was to give kids exams at the end of each year, and allow homeschooling to those who overall results are not worse than the average results of kids who attend school. Because, intuitively, they don’t do worse than the school system on average. At the same time, the kids would get feedback on their abilities. It would be flexible—the better the school system, the more difficult to avoid it, but that’s kinda okay then; and the worse the school system, the easier to avoid it. It would also allow smart kids to follow their own plan, because doing worse in a subject or two is allowed as long as you excel in the remaining ones.
This does not account for the type of abuse that is unrelated to educational outcomes. Also, social skills.
It also does not account for innate differences in intelligence, or learning disabilities. Kids who are retarded or dyslexic would have to attend school. Kids with high intelligence, mostly neglected by their parents but still with some access to online education, could pass the tests… low below their personal potential, but still barely above the population average.
How about a compromise? A month or two of mandatory school at the beginning of every year, then allow homeschooling for the rest of the year. Exams at the end of the year. Though I suspect this might actually make everyone unhappy.
Alternatively, some kind of mandatory “socialization that is not school” for homeschoolers, one or two months every year. Maybe mixed up with the exams somehow. Like, kids would be together, with some teachers, just talking about what they learned at home previously, then write some exams. (Logistical problem, what about those teachers who only have a job one or two months every year? Maybe we could use summer holidays for this? But homeschoolers also want some summer vacation.)
I think that is too heavy-handed.
For example: looking at kids that teach themselves to read, my impression is that the timing of literacy follows a normal distribution with the median at about 8 years. There are several upsides to learning reading on your own. And kids that learn at 10 or so do not seem to become weaker readers. So check-ins would have to be sensitive that kids develop at different speeds. Implementing reading tests at 6 or 7 would lead the majority to have to learn reading through coercion, which I think we should limit. I’d rather see a test at 10 or so, to catch kids that are on the later part of the bell curve.
If you do frequent and comprehensive tests, then you turn homes into schools, instead of allowing them to be a part of the learning system. I think tests need to be limited to the most crucial skills, likely just arithmetic and reading. Adding more tests limits the time kids can spend diversifying into their unique interests, and seeing after their individual needs.
Edit: I think portfolios are enough to determine if a kid is developing. If the portfolio doesn’t help the evaluator judge how the kid is doing, one can do diagnostic tests. And admission to University should to a large degree be reserved for students that perform well on a standardized aptitude test; that tends to be fairer to disadvantaged groups.
And socialization is usually not a problem, but one needs ways of catching the kids that do end up. I’m not sure how to make that fine-grained enough. Mandatory two-month socialization seems a bit too coarse, though of course better than what we see in countries that allow no freedom from schooling. And I have no better solution for how to catch the kids from homeschooling recovery right of the bat.
But I think the most important thing is for kids to have someone outside the family that spends time with them and get a feeling for their growth and situation. That can probably catch a lot of problems, without being logistically hard or overly controlling.