Should teachers go private using the homeschooling system? - The public schools have failed, maybe it's time to go independent?

Betonhaus

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With all the public schools being really, really bad - to the point that home schooled kids vastly outperform their peers, should the underpaid teachers who put up with that shit start doing independent work? using the homeschooling syllabus as a standard, could they work as a tutor where they go to the kid's house to teach for a few hours and give them homework - or possibly form a collective with other parents who help assist in teaching for the kids in their neighborhood?
 
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Oh definitely.
I used to be a teacher a long time ago and the main problem for me with the education system is that it's boring as fuck to learn in school.
Most of the time, it feels like a prison when you're there.
Kids need to enjoy learning.

If you go private, you can create your own program and make it whatever you want as long as you get the results expected.
You can make it better and definitely a lot shorter.
Cut out all the bloat from everything till the end of high school and you could teach all of it in 3 years instead of 12, save so much time and give kids some years to figure out what they're good at.
And speaking of that, you can adjust the way you teach to individual students because not everyone is the same and people learn in different ways, standardized system is good (sort of) for teaching the absolute basics like reading and writing but beyond that, it damages a lot of people's futures.

A good creative teacher working privately will make bank in this growing industry.
 
how can we encourage more teachers and ex-teachers to go this route?
 
Only the good ones have the charisma, creativity and skill to do that.

Most teacher are mediocre at best.
 
Historically, I don't think homeschooling had much of an edge on public school. In modern day, I expect outcomes are heavily reliant on district and local ethos. I will say that the current K-12 environment is developmentally bad for kids and teens; recreation, especially physical, is hugely important for kids' personal growth. What public schools used to offer was socialization and controlled risk. These days, it seems like half the elementary schools don't even offer out-door recess regularly. It's horrifying.

Teaching, like most fields, has been destroyed by academia's need for novelty. This means that a lot of "science-backed" and "research-based" pedagogy is either absolute tripe or repackaged common sense. So, every few years, teaching standards change dramatically to align with new insights (i.e. bunk). Any economist would tell you that a large industry overhaul every 10-15 years is inefficient--just look at the electric car market.

(As an aside, I recently had to sit through a training on "flipped classrooms" where students read the textbook before class. This is retarded; this is the minimum expectation across any hard science or any humanities class.* If you didn't do the reading, how can you be prepared to speak? *Most kids also learn to fake knowledge or insight when they haven't done the reading, and they can generally get the gist from their peers or instructor during class-time. This means a student learns two skills: to prepare well and to think fast. Sometimes I think this expected outcome should be explicitly stated to the students, so they have clarity in what they did learn when they "never did the readings".)

The other problem is that public schools need to cater to the worst families. To do this and make it fair, states mandate things like preschool or all-day kindergarten or NCLB or mainstreaming SPEDs. These are bad for the kids and therefore bad for everyone, including teachers.

I don't think teachers acting as governesses/tutors would address either of the above problems effectively, and I simply don't believe that most teachers are capable of developing their own curricula.

I think, instead, government focus needs to shift from "best teaching practices" to "best childhood" practices. Learning is fun, playing outdoors is fun, and actions have consequences, so don't punch Jacob. I also think that more smart and competent people would be willing to be teachers if there was more autonomy and less extraneous bureaucratic nonsense, and as The Bell Curve noted, smart people are better at their jobs.
 
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Sorry to bring back that thread from the dead and for not being completely related to this thread, but one SOB Democrat proposed a bill who wants to ban homeschooling unless parents prove it's for religious reasons.

Virginia Democrat Bill Would Ban Homeschooling Unless Parents Prove It’s For Religious Reasons​


Virginia Senator Stella Pekarsky, D-Fairfax, introduced a bill to restrict families’ access to homeschool options.

This month, Virginia State Sen. Stella Pekarsky, D-Fairfax, introduced a bill to the Virginia Senate to restrict families’ access to homeschool options.

SB1031, currently under consideration in Virginia’s Senate, states that a student in Virginia who is granted exemption from attending public or private school must have “bona fide religious training or belief [that] is conscientiously opposed to attendance at school.” The legislation further specifies that “bona fide religious training or belief does not include essentially political, sociological or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.”

Pekarsky’s proposed legislation narrows the scope for reasons why Virginia’s families are permitted to choose to homeschool their children. Currently, homeschool law in Virginia only requires a notice of intent, not “bona fide religious” objection to school attendance. And really, is it appropriate for the state government to be assessing citizens’ religions as “bona fide” or otherwise?
 
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