Interesting points. However, I think the study you referenced is a bit small to draw any significant conclusions from, given that there were only 12 unstructured homeschoolers. I also think that those homeschoolers are probably not representative of your average American middle class/low income student, who might have their parents (or single parent) working full-time and thus unable to homeschool them much at all. As far as I could tell, even the the “unschooled” kids still got a lot of guidance from their parents.
I think the signaling theory has some truth to it, especially at the university level, but I’m personally very skeptical of it at the the k-12 level. Schools allows societies to more efficiently distribute childcare, which is economically advantageous. It allows parents (especially mothers) to return to the workforce. It effectively allows adults to pool their resources together to make educating and looking after children a lot less time consuming and expensive.
Nevertheless, I think you bring up an important point. No school might not be that damaging for some kids. If schools continue to stay closed, I would guess we would see the following two things happen. 1) kids with rich/upper middle class parents might actually do better because their parents can afford to custom tailor their education. 2) Kids with poor/working parents will do worse because there will be basically no incentives for them to learn on their own and their parents will be unable to teach them. Thus, inequality between the two groups will increase.
You’re right about the small sample, I read the paper some time ago and forgot/didn’t notice that.
I think you’re also right about the K-12 school purpose as being more a daycare facility than anything else. I wouldn’t necessary expect custom-tailoring the education on a large scale—parents still have to work (from home or not) or need to take care of many other issues araising from the current situation.
My prediction would be that the inequality araising from that factor would stay ~the same, because first, I feel that education on that level doesn’t matter that much in the long run, second, because many extracurricular activities for middle/upper class are not available, and third, when it does matter, there is a greater focus on producing quality learning materials online, which further bridges the gap.
Interesting points. However, I think the study you referenced is a bit small to draw any significant conclusions from, given that there were only 12 unstructured homeschoolers. I also think that those homeschoolers are probably not representative of your average American middle class/low income student, who might have their parents (or single parent) working full-time and thus unable to homeschool them much at all. As far as I could tell, even the the “unschooled” kids still got a lot of guidance from their parents.
I think the signaling theory has some truth to it, especially at the university level, but I’m personally very skeptical of it at the the k-12 level. Schools allows societies to more efficiently distribute childcare, which is economically advantageous. It allows parents (especially mothers) to return to the workforce. It effectively allows adults to pool their resources together to make educating and looking after children a lot less time consuming and expensive.
Nevertheless, I think you bring up an important point. No school might not be that damaging for some kids. If schools continue to stay closed, I would guess we would see the following two things happen. 1) kids with rich/upper middle class parents might actually do better because their parents can afford to custom tailor their education. 2) Kids with poor/working parents will do worse because there will be basically no incentives for them to learn on their own and their parents will be unable to teach them. Thus, inequality between the two groups will increase.
You’re right about the small sample, I read the paper some time ago and forgot/didn’t notice that.
I think you’re also right about the K-12 school purpose as being more a daycare facility than anything else. I wouldn’t necessary expect custom-tailoring the education on a large scale—parents still have to work (from home or not) or need to take care of many other issues araising from the current situation.
My prediction would be that the inequality araising from that factor would stay ~the same, because first, I feel that education on that level doesn’t matter that much in the long run, second, because many extracurricular activities for middle/upper class are not available, and third, when it does matter, there is a greater focus on producing quality learning materials online, which further bridges the gap.