90 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 24 May
As an aside. I met another home school parent yesterday when I took my daughter to pick up her tball uniform for this season. The meeting spot was the local Legion and there is a park right next to it. My daughter wanted to play in the playground at the park.
She started playing with a little boy and so I was talking to the little boys mom and she said she has 4 kids. The oldest is in high school now and is still in public school but the two middle ones she pulled out of school after covid and started homeschooling them and the youngest who my daughter was playing with would be homeschooling as well starting next school year.
I was so pleased. I feel somewhat vindicated with this trend after years of Yuppies that worked on Bay street (Canadian wall street) and for Google that lived in my neighbourhood looking at me sideways when I said my son was homeschooled. These are the type of people that leave their kids with a nanny 24/7 so both parents can be corporate fiat slaves for 80 hours a week to pay for their 2M home and matching mercedes but will pass judgement on you and act like you are a bad parent for trying to give your kid the best education and environment to learn and grow.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
I think those kind of parents lash out at parents like you and your wife because deep down they believe they should be giving their kids more attention.
I know my mom feels guilty about working so much, even though we were definitely not affluent.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 24 May
Agreed. We have a very different lifestyle now and it was a major upgrade.
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69 sats \ 4 replies \ @cryotosensei 25 May
I wish to provide the other perspective.
In Japanese schools, children are taught to socialise and be cooperative members of society. They have many structures in place: serving classmates lunch, cleaning the school every day, singing choral songs, running an inter-class relay. Ofc it’s not always good that individual expression is suppressed as a way to pander towards collective consensus. But they also make headlines by making sure the host nation’s dressing rooms and stadiums are left spick and span at the end of a soccer game.
The battle for academic excellence is outsourced (quite irresponsibly, I admit) to cram schools, but I still have a lot of respect for public school education in Japan
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63 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 25 May
I'm still against it as an institution, but we've talked before about some of the things I like about Japanese education. Giving kids lots of actual responsibilities is the top of the list. Various alternative schools do similar things in America.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that the youth suicide rate is quite high in Japan because of the academic pressure they're put under. That is certainly not a worthwhile tradeoff in my book.
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115 sats \ 2 replies \ @cryotosensei 25 May
You are right about the high youth suicide rate in Japan. The reasons are manifold, including bullying, family pressures, sense of isolation, etc. I would say many suicides happen because of peer bullying and harassment.
One aspect in which the academic pressures could be lethal is seen in the trend of hikikomori. It happens to females too, but many young men, upon realising that they cannot keep up with the academic rigour of the system, mentally check out and lock themselves up in their rooms, refusing to step out at all. Many of them stay inside and cut off contact with the physical world for years. Unfortunately, Singapore is starting to exhibit signs of this phenomenon. Our system isn’t exactly the easiest to navigate.
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63 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 25 May
I know my Chinese friends felt that their education system was unhealthily intense.
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115 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 25 May
It’s madness in China. Kids there really study from dawn to dusk. And when they fail to make the grade during the Gaokao (college entrance exams), they are doomed to a life of contract work because competition there is so stiff. China has 20% youth unemployment rate currently.
Singapore has taken some steps to reduce the heat of our system. We abolished mid-year exams and blurred the distinction between different calibres of students, among other things. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. Parents themselves exert pressure on their offspring by expecting stellar grades and sending them for too many tuition classes.
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69 sats \ 4 replies \ @Coinsreporter 25 May
In India the problem is that, public schools are like shops or businesses just wanting to earn money. They don't care if students learn or not. Even the teachers are highly underpaid. However the fees are very high. To be precise, they charge around $500 annually from one student and they easily can have 1000 students. So, the fees accumulates to $500000. And such schools have a staff of 50 people who are paid on a average an amount of less than $2000 annually. Hardly $100000 annually for everyone. So, they make 70% to 80% profits every year.
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11 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 25 May
That's wild!
Where does that money go? Is it essentially a tax on parents?
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Coinsreporter 25 May
This money goes to the school owner and these people don't have to pay taxes to government as there's no tax on Educational businesses.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 25 May
Those are private schools, then. "Public" school is a euphemism for government run schools.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 25 May
We call private schools 'public schools' and government schools are just 'government schools'.
Okay, there may be some misunderstanding due to language constraints but the co dition of government schools in India is very poor. In fact, most schools don't have good infrastructure and sufficient teachers.
Yes, one thing is good that government teachers are paid 10 times more than private a.k.a. public school teachers.
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69 sats \ 1 reply \ @TNStacker 24 May
It was set up when we went from agrarian to industrial and never caught up. It is not ready the the post-induatrial world for the average person. Those who have well- educated or highly-educated parents overcome, if the parents are critical thinkers. Otherwise it creates slaves to a bygone system. And a national babysitter service so the slaves can slave.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
Whether or not it was ever a good idea, you're right that it's clearly not adapted for the modern world.
Parents will resist giving it up, though, because it is the national babysitting service.
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63 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 24 May
I'm not familiar with the American education system, but I think I've heard that schools have a lot of freedom in choosing what they teach. Is that accurate, or are there mandatory subjects?
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51 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
I don't know how it stacks up to other nations (other than lower achievement), but there are lots of federal, state, and local curriculum regulations.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 24 May
Public schools are very highly regulated. Lots of federal regulations.
From 2012 until very recently, it was illegal/against the regulations (if you took federal money, which all public schools do) to serve whole milk in schools. It had to be skim milk or skim chocolate milk. And no kid is going to drink skim milk when they can drink sugary chocolate milk.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
I suspect kids are also choosing whole chocolate milk over whole milk, as well, but I take your point.
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42 sats \ 3 replies \ @thebitcoinbugle 24 May
But without public education, how would kids learn to read? Would you expect parents to teach them this?
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51 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
Irrelevant, they don't learn to read in government schools anyway.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @thebitcoinbugle 24 May
yes they do. People did not learn how to read before public education.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 24 May
You got me there
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