We just began home schooling for our thirteen year old after a couple of miserable months at the local middle school, where the staff clearly have no influence over the pervasive culture of violence among the students. We'll look again when high school comes around, but for now, online classes seem like the best choice. We signed up with Prisma:
This approach differs from traditional home schooling in that we don't have to provide the lessons ourselves. My wife, who prefers remote work anyway, can help the kiddo stay on schedule and avoid (too much) distraction, while still primarily focusing on their own job.
Home education was my parents' answer for me, too, coincidentally enough - I never had any conventional schooling until college. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, but it certainly worked well for me.
Up to high school the number 1 reason for me to send my kid to school is the social aspect of being in school, making friends, dealing with “drama,” assessing risk, figuring shit out… in 2024 kids REALLY do not need to go to school to “learn stuff” - they have all the knowledge of the world at the palm of their hands. my kid does A LOT of studying at home, her computer is always on in my office, when I move upstairs she is on her ipad on Claude or watching lectures on Youtube etc… I do not undertand
homeschooling mostly because I do not understand how it can be healthy for kids to be alone most of the day staring at the screen…
I do wish that she could have more of an in-person social life, but spending most of the day staring at a screen is clearly doing her less harm than the spirit-crushing environment of aggression and unpredictable violence she was dealing with at school. A fair bit of what she's doing with that screen involves socializing with other kids, anyway.
My own background leads me to believe that people overestimate the value of the social skills one must learn in order to thrive among large, artificially age-segregated groups of barely-monitored children, who know nothing and are apt to hurt each other: an environment unlike anything we experience in adulthood. Eventually one must learn - from adults! - how to behave like an adult, after all, and those are the skills which actually matter in the long run.
https://www.joinprisma.com/
This approach differs from traditional home schooling in that we don't have to provide the lessons ourselves. My wife, who prefers remote work anyway, can help the kiddo stay on schedule and avoid (too much) distraction, while still primarily focusing on their own job.
Home education was my parents' answer for me, too, coincidentally enough - I never had any conventional schooling until college. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, but it certainly worked well for me.
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