Not a thread about this one: Common Core (no?)Follow

Here's a link to one of those pretty pictures with lots of numbers on it; Spoilernote the potentially bias source, of course .

A general consensus amongst homeschooling parents is that it only takes about an hour of homeschooling to teach what a kid would normally learn in 6 hours of school, quality (along the lines of individual attention) over quantity kind of thing. Now whether or not the kids would actually be better at school (given that having parents involved in their education enough to consider homeschooling likely means they'd do well anyways) is a good question, and I think one a lot of parents will at least wonder about from time to time.

It's not necessarily an all or nothing thing of course, as many homeschooling parents (ourselves included) will supplement with a private tutoring service or something similar. Giving the kids a couple of hours a week with one-on-one attention from a certified teacher. Often times the parent is not even the one teaching the subject matter (a common misconception methinks), they're out in the world: museums, historical landmarks, science centers, etc. learning from people and exhibits there.

Edited, Sep 6th 2014 10:14am by someproteinguy

It's not those kind of home schoolers that concern me, though. It's the religious ones that never let their kids have socialization with anyone else, and who don't give them the broadening experiences where they can learn outside of a traditional curriculum.

I did fine in public school, but I had supportive parents who were able to pick me up and drop me off from activities.

The efficacy of homeschooling is greatly under-researched

Nah, there is plenty of research. It works amazingly poorly with a few exceptions. Parents who are former teachers or have a background in childhood education, legitimately gifted children, that sort of thing. For average kids, it generally turns out good spellers who fail catastrophically at the university level. Maybe his kids are gifted or he used to be a teacher, I don't really know much about it. If not, he's probably damaging them for life out of some sort of self righteous hubris, which is pretty much the opposite of good parenting.

It probably also depends on the quality of the schools available.

TBH I'm skeptical of it as well, it's just one of those numbers you'll hear homeschooling parents repeat a lot. Even then though, I'm not sure how you really track it, or how they came up with it. I have a real hard time drying a clear line between learning time and non-learning time, as lessons tend to pop up randomly throughout the day. Oldest asks something like "why is milk a liquid?" and all of a sudden you're doing a science experiment with freezing water or something. Or you happen across a police officer while out and about and they get an impromptu civics lesson.

Now that you mention it, I think one of my co-workers said the same thing. I'm just thinking about the middle school grades when you have 6 distinct classes with 6 knowledgeable instructors doing hour lectures. There is no way you could efficiently cram that much information into one hour even if each instructor only taught for 30 minutes.

Gas would make it harder to transfer nutrients, while solid and plasma would probably kill the adult?

Well, there's powdered milk, so it's a decent starting point for a conversation about states. Plasma milk sounds awesome.

Preferred beverage of Super Heroes universe-wide.

I like that, and I think we even have some too as a bonus. She understood the whole "it's mostly water" part of it and we worked from there. Also got the "why does water reflect light?" thing handled.

Next up is "why do cows have 4 legs?" Or is this the point where the homeschooling parent is supposed to say "because Jesus said so" and avoid the question?

If I did home schooling there would be at least an hour of gun safety and marksmanship thrown in there.

I mean, there most likely will be in the future, but not for a grade or anything ...

Call the authorities, someone tried to say butt on the internet!