Comment by nyarlathotep_
3 days ago
IME, poor quality of education at a shocking number of schools, even in "good areas".
Granted, I grew up in a rural place, and from a social perspective my school years were pretty good (high school was great, it was literally like movies that were popular at the time in the 2000s). I have many friends that I still talk to very often that I've known for the better part of 20-30 years.
Seems like this experience isn't the norm here. I suspect my experience is both a function of time and place.
Those positives aside, the "education" I received through high-school was incredibly poor.
I'm absolutely blown away when I see kids today taking programming classes in high school or calculus or "AP Stats" or any of this stuff.
I'd not even heard of "Mechanical Engineering" until some friends picked that as a college major my senior year, to say nothing of programming as a vocation.
Granted this was 20-odd years ago, but considering the low quality, any parent that wants their kids to aspire to "more" in an equivalent position today would have to either: - pay loads for a private school - spend substantial time giving their kids supplementary education outside of school (barring the naturally curious and ambitious). Given time and energy constraints, such a proposal doesn't even seem feasible)
It's pretty obvious to me why you'd want to homeschool today, given experiences like this and the boundless high-quality material instantly available online and elsewhere.
Socialization is the other concern.
America hasn't really taken public education seriously in a long time. That's funding for schools, serious academic standards, building more schools so class sizes stay reasonable, and insisting on having rules in place to make sure classes are not disrupted. People either just want to throw money at the problem or lower standards or make sure rich communities have good schools and poorer communities get what they "deserve" (ie. "you don't make enough/your house is not worth enough, so your school's quality will/should suck").
The way that civic pride, communities, and public education, were all tied together has withered away in the last 4-5 decades. Now, access to good, serious, education is a zero-sum game.