Comment by graemep
3 days ago
> Well, normal, boring people tend to send their kids to school, so your chances of a normal, boring homeschooling experience are pretty slim.
Depends what you mean by normal. My experience is kids get more freedom, meet a wide range of people, and generally get a much better education. Maybe it is different here in the UK.
> And even the most well-intentioned of counter cultural folks don't always excel at parenting, never mind educating.
The home ed community in the UK does have a lot of hippie types in it, but even if I do not see eye to eye with them I think their kids are mostly a lot better educated than the average school child.
> hings we wouldn't generally countenance (be that actual abuse,
which also happens to school going kids. it happens more often to school going kids (and as far as I can see from stats, home ed kids are at lower risk - more likely to be investigated, less likely to have action taken). On top of that there is a fair amount of abuse in schools.
> just plain old "unschooling" - aka "ignore the kids till they go away").
that is not what unschooling is. Unschorling parents can make a great deal of effort, its just that they let kids decide what they want to learn and facilitate it.
> Maybe it is different here in the UK.
Yes, I was originally homeschooled in the UK, and while a lot of the parents where pretty far out there, there was definitely a lower prevalence of weird religious cults and that sort of thing (than in the US).
> that is not what unschooling is
That's why I put "unschooling" in quotes. There are certainly folks doing ethical things under that banner, but the legitimacy of the term provides cover for a lot of folks who aren't doing the ethical thing.