Comment by Arkhaine_kupo
8 days ago
> They also strongly believe the hoi polloi have to be forced to do what is good for them - e.g. the sugar tax and other "nudge politics", or the currently Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is basically about imposing central policy on how children are brought up and educated.
A non insulting way to view that is that central goverments understand incentives, and in the same way there are child incentives for people starting families, having incentives for healthier eating is something a central goverment should use its taxation policy for.
More control over education standards is also a common purview of many good educational systems. Decentralisation is not necesirely better, with teh extreme being homeschooling failing every time its attempted. Centrally dictated standards was the method of the French revolution, believing that a society where everyone roughly understands the world the same way was a society that was more unified. French "equality , fraternity and legality " is a basis for modern liberal democracy almost everywhere, but they didnt get there without authoritarian imposition of their standards, with entire minority cultures getting trampled along the way.
The hyperbole and bad faith explanations of legislation is not a good representation or argument against why britain is more accepting of som legislation many feel intrusive.
A better argument is that this piece of legislation was passed late on the rule of a disastrous administration and the number of problems in day to day society largely are unaffected by it, so it got no time in the spotlight for people to complaint or know it was coming until it was days away from being implemented. Society is also largely technologically illiterate, this is pretty much the case everywhere in the planet, which means the nuances of tech legislation are lost even on the people writting and voting on it.
>with teh extreme being homeschooling failing every time its attempted.
I don't know where this is coming from; statistically speaking, homeschooled children do better on pretty much every educational outcome. Because the absolute number one factor determining student outcomes is the ratio of students to teachers; the fewer students per teacher, the better.
> Because the absolute number one factor determining student outcomes is the ratio of students to teachers; the fewer students per teacher, the better.
Home educated kids often teach themselves so the student teacher ratio is infinity so terrible!
Both my kids taught themselves some subjects (had tutors for other, had me for some, so lots of one to one too). They did just as well in the subjects they taught themselves (8 and 9 in GCSE Latin, which as they did not have a tutor and I am terrible at languages is very much self taught).
This is a very common fallacy repeated by people who are either interested in supporting homeschooling, or haven't thought much about the subject.
The most telling stats is that the percentage of homeschooling parents increases, specially in religious communities but the test takers in homeschooled scenarios almost always come from higher educated urban families.
There is a large case of selectin bias, in a public school every kid takes an SAT test. For homeschooled kids, the kid of two doctors who was homeschooled and aces tests for breakfast he takes teh SAT and smokes any underfunded public school near him (although he probably scores average or below prep schools that cost arguably less than his homeschooling, with additional socialisation benefits etc). Meanwhile the hyper religious family wanting their daughter to marry at 16 is not letting that barely literate girl take her SATs.
The two groups in favour of home schooling are hyper capitalistists who think the disruption of public schooling + their advantage will make their kid unstopable, and the niche fringe believes, usually religious who are scared of interacting with mainstream institutions for fear of disrupting their reality. Both are problematic, anti social and harmful groups and their over representation in goverment and media is largely a sympton of the inability of liberal institutions to fight against illiberal threats.
> This is a very common fallacy repeated by people who are either interested in supporting homeschooling
There are many academic studies, across many countries, that confirm the better results. Your evidence is?
> Meanwhile the hyper religious family wanting their daughter to marry at 16 is not letting that barely literate girl take her SATs.
Not really a thing in the UK, or most places. It might have some truth in the US but sounds like a biased view
On the contrary I credit home education with getting my older daughter into a male dominated career (she designed power electronics for EVs).
> The two groups in favour of home schooling are hyper capitalistists who think the disruption of public schooling
Not really a thing in the UK either. Home educators tend to be social liberals and politically left wing
In fact of the many home educators I have come across very few fit your description.
> with additional socialisation benefits
Because meeting the same people of the same age from the same area in the same place every day for many years is a great way to develop social skills and make a variety of friends.
> although he probably scores average or below prep schools
I went to one of the best schools in Britain academically and my kids got a better academic education (as well as in other ways) than I did.
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