Comment by pie_flavor
3 days ago
When the experts say that algebra should not be taught in 8th grade, and the experts say that guessing at words instead of sounding them out is a better way to learn to read, and the experts say that calc can be replaced with 'data science' which is actually just data literacy, and so on and so forth, I'm not really interested in how the precise definition of 'experts' actually refers to something about 'growing our collective knowledge'. I'm more interested in staying away from all that. It's a fun gotcha to say things like 'well evidence either is or isn't', but it doesn't change the material reality of who's doing what and what they're likely to be doing in the near future. Public schooling is fucked, the group of people saying 'listen to the experts' is the group of people making it worse, a lot of it is explicitly political, and your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are homeschooling or parochial school, regardless of what words and rhetoric can be said about it.
Don't forget the we can't teach the 4 operations in first year of primary school. Meanwhile, all the books from 1950 have them by lesson 2 and school was mandatory at that time.
We homeschooled our kid for a few months due to her marvelous classmates, teacher and director, she wrote and learnt more than 4 years worth of study in Switzerland. Unfortunately she is highly sociable and we couldn't give her the constant "stream of kids" all day long.
Wouldn't the best of both worlds be a mixed approach? Let her socialize at school and learn some things and teach her extra at home? Sort of home school lite?
> your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are homeschooling
Accepting your premise that "public schooling is fucked" (I disagree) there's absolutely zero guarantee that homeschooling is any better for any particular child. It's a completely random chance whether your parent, or whichever potentially untrained person, is going to provide you with an education that sets you up for society, work and the wider world.
Public schools at least have defined curricula, governance structures, complaints procedures, _accountability_ in some form.
1 untrained parent teaching <4 kids is better than an expert with 25 kids to teach.
Public schools have terrible curricula, procedures, and accountability. Go look at any school in Detroit and see how effective schooling is. They have all the things you mention, and they are ABYSMAL. Truly a terrible option, every one of them. They are also VERY well funded.
Homeschooling doesnt have a guarantee of success. Public school does come with a guarantee of failure.
> Public school does come with a guarantee of failure.
I disagree, because it's demonstrably false, but I don't think there's a reasonable point of debate here. I'm sorry you feel that the state has failed so badly here.
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> It's a completely random chance
No, I don't think these outcomes are being determined by RNGs, but rather by much more deterministic inputs related to the intentions and resources of the parents.
I estimate that I have a 90% chance of being better. If you aggregate everyone in the country, the median person might not have a 90% chance of being better, but that has nothing to do with me.
Can you explain why you disagree? Students have been performing worse each year, beginning a couple years before COVID. For example, scores and number of test-takers on the AMC 10/12s have decreased. Similarly, teacher retention is at an all-time low. Do you think it's relatively easy to fix, or that things will naturally get better over time?
I think to avoid arguments on the term "experts", just replace every instance of it with "so-called experts".