When our firstborn was in kindergarten and had trouble with his peers, I was very worried about how he would fare in school. I was considering setting up a homeschooling school. Not real homeschooling because Germany has mandatory schooling but using a legal construct that uses a private school as ‘adapter’ between multiple co-home-schooling parents. I had already researched the requirements and written (parts of) the application. But it turned out that our son had no problems in school—quite the opposite. Part of the reason probably was that he had an extremely experienced and caring teacher who also allowed me to offer some activities in the class (I was the “fried of numbers” in the class).
Anyway, your idea of a teaching community sounds quite like what I had in mind with my homeschooling school (though regulations would have set significant parts of the curriculum). I understand that you want to teach the ‘valuable’ parts of the curriculum like active reading and writing skills, math, and the scientific method plus some more useful stuff that is left unspecified. Over time, I have discussed multiple times how education can be improved. We have taught our kids many things that are not part of the school curriculum, and I have made clear which aspects I judge to provide little long term value. Talking about the process with my kids (my oldest is now in 10th grade) has also informed my views. He has his own opinions on it. Now, with COVID19, he had the opportunity to study more self-directed and enjoyed it (and invested much more effort in some school projects than before).
My conclusion is that there is no simple answer. Do we understand why school is the way it is? Is it some Chesterton’s Fence? I think so. Especially after a lengthy discussion, I have concluded that school reproduces more than knowledge. It reproduces culture. It does so partly by creating a shared experience, a shared vocabulary, and shared methods of working together. And shared social networks. Sure, a big part is signaling. But the structure that the signaling supports—fitness for work in the corporate world—is highly interconnected with everything else. Can we get rid of it without breaking a lot of things? Maybe. It is worth a try for sure. Let’s experiment and learn.
The other aspect is that you and I might have good ideas about which curriculum would be best. But that is informed by our predisposition—which our kids may or may not share. The world is evolving fast. We may be well-adapted to the current state (hopefully, after not too painful learning experience). But that doesn’t mean that passing our tools on to our kids makes them well-equipped for the future also. The jobs we have now didn’t exist when we were kids (at least mine didn’t). Many of today’s well-paying professions didn’t exist before the age of the internet. At least not in the form we see them now. As usual, the future arrives with leaving things superficially unchanged—but things did change. And they will do so in the future too. Maybe even faster.
I talk a lot with my older son about how I do not know which future job will be best for him. I can only provide ideas and support, and he has to figure out most of it. I’m not worried. He is so rational and seems to take up many of my suggestions quickly. I am more concerned about his younger brother, who watches YouTube videos without end. But who am I to judge? When I was his age, I was reading copious amounts of science fiction. Many would have judged this a waste of time. And I played around with these computer things (that was in the 80s). Who knows? Maybe his fluency in these memes and the English he is picking up from it will be useful for him. I think his older brother will benefit from the rationality skills too. But I can’t force the tools. I will keep talking with them. Talking helps.
It seems that the regulations in the Czech Republic are actually legally “workable”, i.e. it’s possible to teach kids close to self-directed without having to do a lot of “compulsory curriculum” (i.e. my estimate is <5%). It also seems there is a “subculture” of families doing this and I managed to get to some people who know how to deal with this.
My conclusion is that there is no simple answer.
I don’t aim for a simple answer and I do not expect there is some. But as I said, the current system seems so broken that just answering “try not to harm” is a good substitution question. Also, it doesn’t really seem that kids would learn [and retain] that much [useful knowledge] compared to “watching youtube videos”.
I have concluded that school reproduces more than knowledge. It reproduces culture.
It does so indeed, but that culture doesn’t seem to be very worthwhile to me. I am rather tempted to risk this one, as the main thing it signals doesn’t seem to be that problematic to pick up later. I.e. homeschooled kids doesn’t seem to have issues when they want to switch to formal education, and at “worst” they pay a year or two of whatever-made-them-happy-or-stronger-in-other-ways for that (again, e.g. watching videos :-) ). I have read/heard this claim quite a lot, and I am less and less convinced that this aspect of schooling is positive.
I also think that some other benefits can be supplied in other ways and even more effectively. For example a good social network—it’s vastly superior/efficient to learn a few networking skills and just infiltrate e.g. some organizations, events or groups with a “good network”. It’s unlikely that it’s your random class that is “good social network”, and e.g. I have literally 0 friends from my primary and secondary school (I have a lot from university though—but anyone can do the uni I did if they want).
The other aspect is that you and I might have good ideas about which curriculum would be best
That kind of links to my previous answer. I am coming to a conclusion that the skills I would like to convey are rather very generic, blurry and meta. I want to teach her how to understand herself, her motivation, discipline, emotions, reasoning, goals and drive, how to understand other minds and how to model the world. I want her to understand how she can learn by herself whatever she wants to learn. It really seems to me that if we don’t want to learn something, then we should rather not learn it as we are not going to remember that anyway. And given the right tools and meta knowledge, we can learn almost everything in much shorter times than the “most common” path. Therefore, I don’t really care that much about the “object-level” curriculum. I think (but that’s still subject to a research) that the concepts important to me can be taught via mostly arbitrary picks in the real world (like nature or engineering) or just going outside and explicitly talk about that person kicking that soda machine. And I can’t imagine how these skills would not be useful or universal to time, at least on ~15 years from now scale, as they seem to be useful since eternity. I can imagine my job going obsolete—but I would use exactly these skills to find and learn something else which would be the best in that time for me.
When our firstborn was in kindergarten and had trouble with his peers, I was very worried about how he would fare in school. I was considering setting up a homeschooling school. Not real homeschooling because Germany has mandatory schooling but using a legal construct that uses a private school as ‘adapter’ between multiple co-home-schooling parents. I had already researched the requirements and written (parts of) the application. But it turned out that our son had no problems in school—quite the opposite. Part of the reason probably was that he had an extremely experienced and caring teacher who also allowed me to offer some activities in the class (I was the “fried of numbers” in the class).
Anyway, your idea of a teaching community sounds quite like what I had in mind with my homeschooling school (though regulations would have set significant parts of the curriculum). I understand that you want to teach the ‘valuable’ parts of the curriculum like active reading and writing skills, math, and the scientific method plus some more useful stuff that is left unspecified.
Over time, I have discussed multiple times how education can be improved. We have taught our kids many things that are not part of the school curriculum, and I have made clear which aspects I judge to provide little long term value. Talking about the process with my kids (my oldest is now in 10th grade) has also informed my views. He has his own opinions on it. Now, with COVID19, he had the opportunity to study more self-directed and enjoyed it (and invested much more effort in some school projects than before).
My conclusion is that there is no simple answer. Do we understand why school is the way it is? Is it some Chesterton’s Fence? I think so. Especially after a lengthy discussion, I have concluded that school reproduces more than knowledge. It reproduces culture. It does so partly by creating a shared experience, a shared vocabulary, and shared methods of working together. And shared social networks. Sure, a big part is signaling. But the structure that the signaling supports—fitness for work in the corporate world—is highly interconnected with everything else. Can we get rid of it without breaking a lot of things? Maybe. It is worth a try for sure. Let’s experiment and learn.
The other aspect is that you and I might have good ideas about which curriculum would be best. But that is informed by our predisposition—which our kids may or may not share. The world is evolving fast. We may be well-adapted to the current state (hopefully, after not too painful learning experience). But that doesn’t mean that passing our tools on to our kids makes them well-equipped for the future also. The jobs we have now didn’t exist when we were kids (at least mine didn’t). Many of today’s well-paying professions didn’t exist before the age of the internet. At least not in the form we see them now. As usual, the future arrives with leaving things superficially unchanged—but things did change. And they will do so in the future too. Maybe even faster.
I talk a lot with my older son about how I do not know which future job will be best for him. I can only provide ideas and support, and he has to figure out most of it. I’m not worried. He is so rational and seems to take up many of my suggestions quickly. I am more concerned about his younger brother, who watches YouTube videos without end. But who am I to judge? When I was his age, I was reading copious amounts of science fiction. Many would have judged this a waste of time. And I played around with these computer things (that was in the 80s). Who knows? Maybe his fluency in these memes and the English he is picking up from it will be useful for him. I think his older brother will benefit from the rationality skills too. But I can’t force the tools. I will keep talking with them. Talking helps.
Hi. Thanks a lot for a really nice write-up.
It seems that the regulations in the Czech Republic are actually legally “workable”, i.e. it’s possible to teach kids close to self-directed without having to do a lot of “compulsory curriculum” (i.e. my estimate is <5%). It also seems there is a “subculture” of families doing this and I managed to get to some people who know how to deal with this.
I don’t aim for a simple answer and I do not expect there is some. But as I said, the current system seems so broken that just answering “try not to harm” is a good substitution question. Also, it doesn’t really seem that kids would learn [and retain] that much [useful knowledge] compared to “watching youtube videos”.
It does so indeed, but that culture doesn’t seem to be very worthwhile to me. I am rather tempted to risk this one, as the main thing it signals doesn’t seem to be that problematic to pick up later. I.e. homeschooled kids doesn’t seem to have issues when they want to switch to formal education, and at “worst” they pay a year or two of whatever-made-them-happy-or-stronger-in-other-ways for that (again, e.g. watching videos :-) ). I have read/heard this claim quite a lot, and I am less and less convinced that this aspect of schooling is positive.
I also think that some other benefits can be supplied in other ways and even more effectively. For example a good social network—it’s vastly superior/efficient to learn a few networking skills and just infiltrate e.g. some organizations, events or groups with a “good network”. It’s unlikely that it’s your random class that is “good social network”, and e.g. I have literally 0 friends from my primary and secondary school (I have a lot from university though—but anyone can do the uni I did if they want).
That kind of links to my previous answer. I am coming to a conclusion that the skills I would like to convey are rather very generic, blurry and meta. I want to teach her how to understand herself, her motivation, discipline, emotions, reasoning, goals and drive, how to understand other minds and how to model the world. I want her to understand how she can learn by herself whatever she wants to learn. It really seems to me that if we don’t want to learn something, then we should rather not learn it as we are not going to remember that anyway. And given the right tools and meta knowledge, we can learn almost everything in much shorter times than the “most common” path. Therefore, I don’t really care that much about the “object-level” curriculum. I think (but that’s still subject to a research) that the concepts important to me can be taught via mostly arbitrary picks in the real world (like nature or engineering) or just going outside and explicitly talk about that person kicking that soda machine. And I can’t imagine how these skills would not be useful or universal to time, at least on ~15 years from now scale, as they seem to be useful since eternity. I can imagine my job going obsolete—but I would use exactly these skills to find and learn something else which would be the best in that time for me.