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We homeschool in Canada and have done so long before the pandemic. Technically, what we do is distance education, as my kid has teachers, a proper curriculum, assignments, etc. She's absolutely thrived with this, where rural public schools were a nightmare of bullying and neglect.
But here there are rules and real requirements. Based on Oliver's video, homeschooling in the US is an utter shitshow. The anti-intellectualism in the US is incredibly bad.
Even worse is the (thankfully small) group of parents who “unschool”. Where they give no attempts to actually educate their children and just let the child learn what they want and when they want
I think it would be fairer to say that homeschooling in the US offers a wider distribution about the mean, with comprehensive, school-board curriculums on the one hand and whatever backward, ahistorical, pseudoscientific garbage the parents want to fill their kids' heads with on the other. It really depends on the state and the family.
Here in California, we do the same as you for our daughter's schooling and it works great for us.
There are also many homeschool types in California that are exactly what the article is about. I had an unfortunate experience with a group of students at my performance arts center. I agree with you in that there are good elements of homeschooling co-opted to be used in bad faith (and permitted by a failure of our government), and similarly good elements of public school that are co-opted by the failings of our government.
Like you said, it depends on the state and the family, but the state is inevitably going to have some slip through the cracks. Add in a certain anti-type group of people and homeschooling is suddenly pushed as the solution to their interpretation of "whatever backward ahistorical pseudoscientific garbage is being pushed". The amount of homeschooled students who have anti-vax parents are way too high and it's truly a plight that doesn't seem to have active prevention, even in states where it's supposed to be better like in California.
Homeschooling and distance learning are two different things here. We also have distance learning as you described (though not many places since COVID restrictions were lifted). Homeschooling is a shit show like you said.
Far from the worst overview of homeschooling in the US I've seen.
Is that a good or bad review?
It means his segment was more nuanced than I expected. It's not "homeschooled = religious weirdos with no social skills".
It's rare to run into people who know what HSLDA is, and have an understanding of how different laws in each state create different environments for homeschooling.
It means his segment was more nuanced than I expected.
They always are. I always cringe when I learn that a generalist journalist is covering something in my areas of expertise, because I worry that they'll feed into misconceptions, but the two segments I remember John Oliver doing in areas that I have professional experience, he explained things better than an expert, in a way that laypersons could understand.
So I've come to trust him a lot more than even more serious journalists, despite his show being a comedy show.