The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

That's actually very sad if it's true.
homeschool = rich people only

Well I'm not exactly rich.

Actually, Homeschooling is cheaper than you think
It'ss not just for the rich.

If you happen to have a parent who can teach you I guess?
But if you want somebody to come over just to teach your single kid that's impossible to pay for for many people.

Not really, pal. It's a lot cheaper than you think. The big part is having a stay at home parent. That usually excludes single-parent homes, which makes the situation worse for those whose parents already made bad choices. It does, however, give traditional dual-parent homes a distinct advantage - their kids will be generally better educated because they will have more homeschoolers.

It's basically natural selection for education.

I easily accept that it can yield a better education (at least the part about learning knowledge-stuff. Social skills are a different matter), but cheap? How does that work? Don't you basically need a teacher who comes over to teach you every day?

usually

Parents are the instructor, and the coursework is some reputable online source. Honestly it does work, but institutions are sticklers about accepting it as readily because they're arseholes.

I have a personal source.

If you happen to have parents who are knowledgable enough, that is a big if.

So if a parent dies early for whatever reason (oh i don't know, disease, accident, sent off to war) they made a bad choice?

You really seem to hate everyone who doesn't have the stereotypical life of father, mother, two kids and never any any bad luck whatsoever in life.

define rich.

You says it's cheaper than you think, but i think it's pretty darn expensive and "cheaper" is still "major expense". What would it cost me versus public school? Is there some oversupply of homeschooling teachers that drives prices down?

You also specify a stay-at-home parent, even though that parent often works for income, so it costs you double (missing income and paying a teacher)

wow...

you really...

you M..

okay natural selection should depend on factors that are entirely exterior to a person???

that's not natural selection that's random as all fuckl

See the credibility of a person who starts a sentence with "I'm better than X because..." and continues with "my parents bla-di-bla....."

Your parents need the most very basic of skills, to teach you calculus, if you are using an internet course as instruction anyway.

The parent doesn't issue you any of your work or how-to, they simply hand you a laptop that acts as a teacher in regards that it gives you a chapter out of a textbook and then question-answer material at the end, on a professional schedule.

Obviously the parent usually has to sit you down for 3 hours a day, providing structure and scheduling, otherwise most kids wouldn't do their work on time. The parent doesn't teach anything though, an internet application teaches you high school courses.

Also, spoiler alert, teachers are known to be garbage about algebra. What home schooling by a parent using an online course does, is essentially what a know-nothing algebra teacher does. Simply makes you read a textbook and answer questions that she grades off an answer key.

If this surprises you about America and isn't true for most the rest of the world, then go figure. But it's definitely true for America in general. School system isn't much to brag about. High level course teachers can be professionals from certified fields, and I always loved them, but low level ones are coaches that double as teachers using textbooks and answer keys.

"our school system is so bad we've given up on it and just let computer programs teach our kids something, let's hope they will understand, because nobody will be around to explain them anything if they have questions"

Sad. I didn't always like school, but overall they did a much much better job than any online course could possibly do.

Can someone explain to me why the public education system is so bad?

From my experience people will blame some part of the education system for all their problems. It's a hell of a long way off perfect but I find that often people don't learn stuff simply because they don't give a **** or they can't be bothered.

It's a convenient excuse, that's about it. If it was "improved" or "fixed" somehow then the responsibility of learning would still fall on the students and their own initiative. It's pretty much just as you say it. There is however a considerable amount of brainwashing/political correctness going on but what place in any society doesn't? Government is like Jesus, has to tend to its sheep you know.

Would help if teachers were trained in their field of teaching, if schools didn't cut corners with budgets by doubling coaches as teachers, if the "leading nation in incarceration" didn't bleed into schools making insubordinate kids into easily damnable targets of aggressive authority, and if the goal of the education system wasn't to score well on a test despite if the child learned any useful skills or not.

It's really really borked. You have no clue how passionately I speak of this subject from. I was a great apple in school, but became really burnt out on schooling seeing friends lynched, authorities try to get hostile with me for doing nothing before learning I was not hostile back, and with most scholarly merits not leading to much workforce credibility.

You speak ill of the method in which Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Eli Whitney acquired the skills they used to change the way the world works. However, I agree with you partially, as far as the "general person" goes, they stand better odds in learning from someone who knows enough to teach in multiple methods, although nowadays even online courses do a good job in teaching through various methods.

I learned more online via http://math.stackexchange.com/ than i did in class.

Math class was basically remembering this stuff http://i.imgur.com/cYxvwBr.png and not understanding its usage in life.

Some people that did well in a calc class really didn't know what mathematics was "about".
eg.:

Spoiler: ayy

it's about relationships and understanding the evolved connections in our world.

We should be taught about the Fibonacci spiral and this stuff http://www.businessinsider.com/7-gifs-trigonometry-sine-cosine-2013-5

English classes are a different story. TLDR kids are taught "reading skills" and not grammar and writing skills (unless you take non-general courses).

A few exceptions don't really mean anything.