“OK, my daughter loves Harriet Tubman. Tell me what you got!” she says. I explain our product, how we use historical women to teach girls about their worth and potential. The mother says: “But is it woke? I mean, I don’t want to teach my daughter about woke.”

And these people feel qualified to teach history.

I used to sell books, oh, 30 years ago or so now.

The home schoolers were the scariest bunch of people you'll encounter.

Had one guy ask where the weather control books were, and I was like "You mean seeding clouds to make it rain? I think we have..."

"No! I mean the government weather control programs!"

Had another lady convinced her electricity was going to give her cancer because it came from a nuclear power plant and was radioactive.

It's not homeschooling, it's unschooling.

My parents were both teachers at private or Christian schools while I grew up, and every year, there'd always be a new couple of kids who's parents couldn't quite hack it anymore, so they'd send them to school. But couldn't bear to send their kids to those secular, godless, evolution teaching, sex driven, minority filled public schools, so they'd send them to my school instead.

Those kids were always some of the dumbest, most ignorant people on the planet. Some figure it out, but most don't. They just double down. They were usually barely literate, couldn't do math, and had no social skills. It's how you end up with a 19 year old freshman who can't read Dr. Seuss.

I know teachers aren't paid much, but if you have the audacity to say that you can do a better job than 4 or 5 professionals at teaching your kid every subject, you should have to take a test to be certified, and your kid needs testing too. Some states require it, most don't, and it shows.

When I hear a woman say "I'm not a feminist" my first thought is "WHY THE HELL NOT??"

“I do have one question, though ― do you teach feminism? I mean, I believe in equality, but I am not a feminist, and I don’t want to teach it to my daughter.”

I take the approach I used in Missouri.

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

“Well, do you teach that women are better than men?”

“No, I teach all genders are equal and should be treated as such.”

She buys three kits.

Jesus wept.

I homeschooled my kid k-12. When I started, I had no idea how many religious hs-ers there were. I used a secular curriculum, and never even thought about teaching anything regarding religion one way or another. Once I started looking around at all the creationist curricula out there--yikes.

Anyhoo, long story short, my son went on to a college degree (he actually started college classes online at 15--one of the perks of hs-ing for us), and he's an atheist. Secular homeschoolers do exist!

ETA some links--these are a few secular homeschool curricula. There's a lot more out there, but this is the majority of what I used through the years:

https://www.calverthomeschool.com/

https://www.oakmeadow.com/

https://www.keystoneschoolonline.com/

https://www.thinkwell.com/ (Primarily math--the professor that does most of the math instruction is wonderful.)

I've come to the conclusion that religious faith is a kind of mental illness that was made socially acceptable to keep primitive people from constantly killing each other, sticking instead to only occasionally killing each other within a vague set of guidelines.

Those of us free of it don't need an insane corkscrew of Escheresque logic and imaginary higher authorities using threats commanding us to not be monsters.

American homeschooling seems to be particularly vulnerable to fascist/religious indoctrination. In most countries where homeschooling is common there's usually a social contract that's enforced to at least regulate the kind of education kids get outside of traditional schooling.

In America, right wing supporters are often the dullest tools in the shed. They're sure they're right, but they don't understand how anything works, historical context, how to discern truth from bullshit, or what words mean.

"I Love the Poorly Educated" -Donald J. Trump

My step sister is going to homeschool her kids, which will be great for her youngest since she named him Jedidiah. Shockingly someone who named their kid that stopped coming to family gettogerthers after my sister's kid came out trans.

She was sad she didn't get invited to my wifes baby shower, even if my niece wasn't planning on going I still wouldn't invite her because you can't just choose to cut out part of the family because you're a bigot and expect everyone else to still want you around.

Americans' obsession with Jesus and the Bible is so weird.

“Not all women are good,” he explains.

“Not all men are good,” I respond.

That's an amazingly pithy pair of lines

I was homeschooled. I 'graduated' without a valid diploma and had to get a GED. I don't speak to my parents and my child is currently enjoying his day at public preschool. All my church friends who were raised similarly also are in similar situations. That's about all I'll say about it.

We had to pull my daughter out of her middle school and put her in an online school for reasons I don't wish to go into, but thankfully the online school is run by the county school corporation and she has a curriculum built by accredited teachers who are also there to talk to the kids by phone, videoconference or in person during school hours. And they are so receptive too. Suddenly I feel like educators care about my child.

But homeschooling? I would never even think of it. I don't know the first thing about pedagogy and neither does my wife. We did a less formal version of online schooling that was hastily put together during COVID while she was still in elementary school and it relied on me doing a lot of the teaching and I sucked at it. There's a big difference between being able to do fourth grade math and being able to teach a fourth grader how to do fourth grade math. A lot of those kids are getting so underserved by having parents, even well-meaning parents, who are not educators try to give their education.

And that doesn't even go into the "my son is learning to be a Christian as a homeschooler" bullshit.

There are definitely kids who would be better served by an alternative to regular public or private school, even school they can do from home. But educators need to be behind it, not parents. Not unless those parents have degrees in education.

Dumbass Christian Karens

I have often read sovereign citizen groups on Facebook, and they all "homeschool", which means the big kids babysit the little ones all day long, and sometimes CPS gets involved and removes the kids and terminates their parental rights because they realize the kids aren't getting educated and are having the shit best out of them routinely. I think homeschooling can be very dangerous for a child.

I worked at a homeschool public charter school for a few years. A good chunk of the parents were only in it because they wanted to use Christian curriculum and other conservative garbage to teach their children.

The school even had me go to a professional development event that ended up being a Christian leadership conference held at a church. One of my coworkers walked out once she realized it was religious and she was forced to use her PTO for the remaining days of the conference. I should have done the same.

Because a parent working, without any accreditation or training since they were a fucking literal child, totally sounds like a preferable route. Give me a fucking break, it's an assault on standardized education.

To make it worse, the kid will have a large drop in socialization opportunities and isolated relatively speaking. You just do not get that kind of social utopia ever again in your entire fucking life... the life experiences the child misses out on is significant. You can't schedule enough playdates to make up for that.

Thank goodness homeschooling is illegal in this country. The best effect is that crazy nutjob parents are not able to install their delusions on their kids as much as they can in the US.

Every time I see articles in this topic, it just solidifies my opinion that homeschooling should not be allowed. We live in a community, and part of that means learning a common set of skills, social interaction with others in your community, and secular, science-based lessons.

I will say homeschooling can be a good teaching style.... With oversight. I am slightly biased because I was home schooled through the 7th grade. My mom wasn't a religion nut, I was homeschooled because the regular public school didn't have the to services for my IEP. So I went to a Charter home school program that had what I needed. To be honest I think I turned out far better than I would have at any regular school.

So, my stepkids (now: boy 12, girl 11) were falling behind in public school and were being passed on to the next grades despite the fact that they were almost a full grade behind in math and reading.

My now-wife decided to pull them out of public school and home school them to try to get them caught up. In our county, we have an AWESOME "public school at home" program where the kids are home schooled, but still go into a school one day a week for socialization and tutoring by licensed teachers. It was a fuck ton of work for her, but in ONE YEAR in the program, not only did the kids catch up, but they're actually almost a full year ahead now.

But... that was with the full support of a county school system and a full-time investment in her kids. This wasn't a "throw a computer at them and let them figure it out" and it certainly wasn't a "summer is different from winter because Jesus said so" program. It was a guided program designed, administered, and overseen by actually licensed teachers. There were performance goals to hit, regular checkins, and available tutoring for things my wife wasn't capable of teaching correctly.

This year, since both kids were so far ahead, we gave them a choice and let them decide whether they wanted to continue the program now that they're caught up. My stepdaughter wanted to go back to regular school. My stepson wanted to stay in the program. He's in middle school as of this year, and middle school begins to be more self-guided. My wife starts nursing school in the spring so she can't dedicate the 8-ish hours necessary to take both kids through the program beginning next semester. So we let them each do what they wanted. My stepson finishes his mostly-self-guided school day in three hours or so then has the rest of the day to do with as he wishes and is still ahead of where he should be. My stepdaughter is miserable because each day is an 8 hour slog and the curriculum moves too slowly for her now, plus the other kids are dicks to her (as kids tend to be). She's considering going back into the program next year when it will be mostly self-guided for her as well.

But this success story is more about my awesome wife and this particular program. It's been a crazy amount of work and a full-time job for my wife to take both kids through this program, and that's WITH the support of a full teaching staff in a county-run program. It's no surprise to me that other programs are more-or-less a joke. If you're not willing to put in the work and/or your idea of education is "It's that way because the LORD said so now stop asking questions and write Jesus on every line," then you're dooming your children to failure and ridicule.

I think if you're going to be annoyed by stupid people, you probably shouldn't make stupid people a core part of your business model. I'm not saying everyone who homeschools their kids is stupid. Just most of them. Like nearly all of them.

I was homeschooled (and I mean homeschooled, like, in the subculture) from Kindergarten through high school and am nominally a functioning member of society in spite of that fact. AMA.

Homeschooled kids are either geniuses or ignoramuses. There is no in-between.

I was homeschooled and it was fine, I did great on standardized tests, had friends, am not a fundamentalist nutjob, etc... I'd like to say to these people please stay, I know it's hard for them but what they're doing is desperately needed. Lots of those people are decent people who live in an echo chamber of conservative insanity, they need patient loving people like you to show up and let them see there's more to life than their bubble.

We are planning to homeschool because school isn't liberal and woke enough.

Kidding aside, it's mostly because of the abuses of teachers, bullying, and school shootings.