We don't need no education

[Nessie]

Lots of kids have failed to return to school after the pandemic.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/03/why-...-to-school-19406159/?ico=top-stories_home_top

"Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils."

Frankly, I don't blame them. School is hell for many kids and after they got to stay away during the pandemic, making their lives better, it is no surprise many have refused to go back.

Furthermore, many see their parents getting the option not to go back to work and keep on working from home. They saw how remote learning works. So, why force them back?

Why not have blended schooling, like blended working? As classes A and B setting down with a teacher in a classroom, class C are logging on with their teacher, from home. Maybe the pupils from class C go into school one morning a week. Maybe other pupils from classes A and B join class C, if there is a reason they are not going to school that day.

My child was at college, having left school early because he hated it so much. He found college easier, but still a challenge. The pandemic sent him home and he is now doing a remote degree through the Open University, happily studying and enjoying life at home. He has friends with jobs who work from home, at least some of the time.

Why force kids into school? Why not embrace home learning and make it part of schooling?

 

[Samson]

I think times they are a changin'.
I think schools were good for mating behaviour, and computers deter this.
Consider how other species continue with mating behaviour unabated by screen time.

 

[lionking]

Lots of kids have failed to return to school after the pandemic.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/03/why-...-to-school-19406159/?ico=top-stories_home_top

"Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils."

Frankly, I don't blame them. School is hell for many kids and after they got to stay away during the pandemic, making their lives better, it is no surprise many have refused to go back.

Furthermore, many see their parents getting the option not to go back to work and keep on working from home. They saw how remote learning works. So, why force them back?

Why not have blended schooling, like blended working? As classes A and B setting down with a teacher in a classroom, class C are logging on with their teacher, from home. Maybe the pupils from class C go into school one morning a week. Maybe other pupils from classes A and B join class C, if there is a reason they are not going to school that day.

My child was at college, having left school early because he hated it so much. He found college easier, but still a challenge. The pandemic sent him home and he is now doing a remote degree through the Open University, happily studying and enjoying life at home. He has friends with jobs who work from home, at least some of the time.

Why force kids into school? Why not embrace home learning and make it part of schooling?

What utter nonsense. As is the rest of this post to be honest.

 

[Nessie]

A kid who wants to learn, but is bullied, or has certain special needs, or certain phobias, is better educated remotely.

My son's education thrived by the switch away from formal to remote learning.

 

[Samson]

What utter nonsense. As is the rest of this post to be honest.

Not nonsense at all. A clear description of an alternative to traditional schooling.
However, I have devised a curriculum that starts with the big bang and the progressive assembly of the periodic table, math to physic to chemistry to biology to language.

 

[lionking]

A kid who wants to learn, but is bullied, or has certain special needs, or certain phobias, is better educated remotely.

My son's education thrived by the switch away from formal to remote learning.

Yes some children need alternatives to school, no question. But you didn’t say that. You said “many”. Prove it. Show your work.

And using the trite song title from an ordinary album to make your point? Come off it.

 

[lionking]

Not nonsense at all. A clear description of an alternative to traditional schooling.
However, I have devised a curriculum that starts with the big bang and the progressive assembly of the periodic table, math to physic to chemistry to biology to language.

Rubbish. Show your work as well. Schools have been effective in developing the most educated generation ever and have put children on the pathway to professions and trades we all need.

Are schools for everyone? Almost, but not all. Is home schooling a better alternative. Of course not. That is just a hippie dream.

 

[Samson]

Rubbish. Show your work as well. Schools have been effective in developing the most educated generation ever and have put children on the pathway to professions and trades we all need.

Are schools for everyone? Almost, but not all. Is home schooling a better alternative. Of course not. That is just a hippie dream.

Wrong in New Zealand. Standards collapsing.

 

[Nessie]

Yes some children need alternatives to school, no question. But you didn’t say that. You said “many”. Prove it. Show your work.

And using the trite song title from an ordinary album to make your point? Come off it.

I used the term many because of this, which I quoted in the OP

"Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils."

That is a lot. It deserves to be called many. Offering a form of blended learning, that has learning from home, rather than school, is the best option to get them back into education, which is different from getting them back into school.

That blended learning might be entirely home based, or it has half days, or just one morning coming into school.

It is not home schooling, the hippy dream, which is parents doing the education. It is kids logging on and speaking to their teacher and doing their lessons from home, in the same way many did during the pandemic, and places like very remote Australia have been doing for years. Furthermore, it could be rigging classrooms with cameras and the teacher sees 20 pupils at their desks and another 10 on a TV screen. The parent's job is to get the child to school, whether that is taking them there, or logging them on.

The pandemic exacerbated a problem, but it also provided the solution.

 

[lionking]

I used the term many because of this, which I quoted in the OP

"Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils."

That is a lot. It deserves to be called many. Offering a form of blended learning, that has learning from home, rather than school, is the best option to get them back into education, which is different from getting them back into school.

That blended learning might be entirely home based, or it has half days, or just one morning coming into school.

It is not home schooling, the hippy dream, which is parents doing the education. It is kids logging on and speaking to their teacher and doing their lessons from home, in the same way many did during the pandemic, and places like very remote Australia have been doing for years. Furthermore, it could be rigging classrooms with cameras and the teacher sees 20 pupils at their desks and another 10 on a TV screen. The parent's job is to get the child to school, whether that is taking them there, or logging them on.

The pandemic exacerbated a problem, but it also provided the solution.

I’m sorry to say, this illustrates your ignorance. Vanishingly few people live in remote Australia without access to school. Despite the country’s size, Australia is one of the highest urbanisation of all nations. And first rate, accessible schools.

You are also, like so many, underestimating the importance of face to face engagement. It is very well known that moving from face to face to remote communication degrades the quality of such communication. Psychology 101.

 

[Nessie]

I’m sorry to say, this illustrates your ignorance. Vanishingly few people live in remote Australia without access to school. Despite the country’s size, Australia is one of the highest urbanisation of all nations. And first rate, accessible schools.

I used that as an example of remote learning, which is different to home learning. During the pandemic, there was a mix of remote and home learning. Some educational establishments and courses suited and switched quickly to remote learning. My son's course was an example of that. A teacher friend who is a primary school teacher in Germany is another. But it is a wealthy private school, with parents who worked with the school.

Others were not so successful and many kids were left behind, failed by the school and their parents. They are the ones who need help to get remote learning working.

You are also, like so many, underestimating the importance of face to face engagement. It is very well known that moving from face to face to remote communication degrades the quality of such communication. Psychology 101.

I have not said it is unimportant. I have suggested a way to engage kids in education, that is better than having over a million drop out of schooling. Remote learning, is better than no learning.

 

[lionking]

I have not said it is unimportant. I have suggested a way to engage kids in education, that is better than having over a million drop out of schooling. Remote learning, is better than no learning.

Schooling is enforced in Australia, with penalties for parents without exemptions (very few have exemptions). I haven’t seen the fabric of society tearing apart.

For the record I worked at a senior level in my state’s education department for many years in a time of great change to school curriculum, staffing and technology. Without blowing my trumpet too hard, I played a key role in integrating disabled children into mainstream schools.

Two of my daughters are teachers, one primary and one secondary, so I have a very good grasp of modern schooling.

Taking children out of face to face teaching in schools will be a major mistake and a failure of government.

 

[Dude111]

Lots of kids have failed to return to school after the pandemic.

 
Yes and its amazing no one is saying a thing about it....

 

[catsmate]

Schools are a strange and rather silly idea. Attempting to teach pre-adults to behave like adults by cramming them together.
Weird.

 

[lionking]

So you never went to school? This explains a thing or two.....

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

As a teacher I can explain my subject of specialization (in my case Chemistry) in many different ways, knowing all the ins and outs and pitfalls that the subject has for high-school students ages 12-18. Building up this knowledge took me about 5 years, the tools to explain to students I'm still refining after 13 years of teaching and every year students surprise me with new ways of looking at things.

A homeschooling parent would need to build this up for every subject available. There is no realistic way this can happen, so homeschooling will always be less effective in general.
Books can only get you so far, as a book cannot look at the answers of a student and explain the same materiel in a different way.
As a example, some students only understand reaction equations if I use visual examples like lego or drawings of various shapes rearranging, whereas other student only under stand the same subject matter if I stay fully mathematical and abstract. By now I know how to recognizes who needs what approach, but that required many students over many years, experience which a parent simply does not have.

If students lie to me about having done their homework, paying attention, etc I am the one they have the conflict with, not their parents who in theory should be the safe space where they can vent about me and my fellow teachers.
Homeschooling imo unhealthily mixes these two roles.

And, for me most importantly, in a school you will be exposed to many different people, viewpoints and ideas. Many of which you might disagree with, or hate, or love. But it teaches you how to deal with this, rather than the closed loop homeschooling, where your parents totally control any information you come into contact with, thus never giving a soon to be adult the tools how to handle disagreement, which imo is far more likely to lead to an unhealthy way of dealing with different people than someone who learned that their way is not the only way in high school.

I understand that there are some exceptions where maybe a homeschooling setup for a limited time might be the best option, but imo it should stay something exceptional, not common.

 

[lionking]

Thank you. Well said

 

[dann]

As a teacher ...

As another teacher, English and German, high school, in Denmark that's 16-19-year-olds.

When I was a student, I was bored out of my skull in school, I hated homework and got away with doing almost nothing. I only managed to get to university (and to pass my exams there as well) by being good at studying for for exams.
For instance:
Three years of Latin where I learned nothing. It took me a week to learn enough on my own to pass.
Four years of French. Three days of study, aided by Linguaphone was enough for me to pass.
Seven years of German. Same thing.
Eight years of English. I had started reading books in English on my own, so I didn't have to study much for the English exam.
With the other stuff like history, geography, biology, physics, I usually got by because I would read about it on my own whenever something caught my interest. Unfortunately, it did not always coincide with the curriculum, but it was usually close enough.

I got through university much the same way: Exams provided a deadline, so one week of study for grammar, a couple of days for phonetics, etc. Literature was a little more tricky (an awful lot of pages!), but I managed by reading a lot of extra-curricular literature on my own.

Being a language teacher, I have often been asked by people interested in learning a language about the best way to do so. My answer has always been: Anything other than taking classes! (I have always told my students the same thing whenever they came up with excuses about having had bad teachers before high school: 'No teachers are so bad that they can prevent you from learning whatever it is they're supposed to teach you.')

The worst thing about learning languages in school is that it takes too bloody long, and you can't feel that you are making any progress from week to week, month to month. You can if you are teaching yourself. I also discovered that I was able to find something interesting for about a week if I really had to, even something as boring as Latin! But for three years?! No way!

To avoid this problem for students, I proposed teaching languages as intensive classes, i.e. one year's curriculum in a couple of weeks, but it couldn't be done within the system.
However, a couple of times I had the opportunity to do something similar: One year of (English) classes taught in three months for people who needed just the high-school diploma in English. It was extremely gratifying for the students to be able to see the progress they made from week to week. For me, too! (It also helped that they usually had a specific purpose they needed the diploma for. )

The downside to studying on your own: If you need some external force to discipline you to do it, you are probably not made for it. So classes it is.

The upside of classes (at the university): When you are more or less self-taught, there may be stuff that you think you know but don't really. Feedback on papers, in particular translations, helped weed out mistakes that I didn't know I made.

In school, kindergarten to high school, the social aspect is probably important. I can't imagine it's mentally healthy for children to be isolated from people their own age. (On the other hand, nowadays they will not get infected with SARS-CoV-2 again and again, but I think #DavosStandard would be a better solution to that problem than home-schooling.)

However, I think school should be very different from what it is today. It should help children and YA to learn stuff they're interested in when they are interested in it instead of trying to force them to learn things that have to be forced (and force themselves) to pretend to find interesting.

For teachers, there is only one thing worse than students who aren't interested in what you are trying to teach them: students who feign an interest they don't have in order to get good grades.
Or maybe that's just me.

 

[Chanakya]

Lots of kids have failed to return to school after the pandemic.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/03/why-...-to-school-19406159/?ico=top-stories_home_top

"Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils."

Frankly, I don't blame them. School is hell for many kids and after they got to stay away during the pandemic, making their lives better, it is no surprise many have refused to go back.

Furthermore, many see their parents getting the option not to go back to work and keep on working from home. They saw how remote learning works. So, why force them back?

Why not have blended schooling, like blended working? As classes A and B setting down with a teacher in a classroom, class C are logging on with their teacher, from home. Maybe the pupils from class C go into school one morning a week. Maybe other pupils from classes A and B join class C, if there is a reason they are not going to school that day.

My child was at college, having left school early because he hated it so much. He found college easier, but still a challenge. The pandemic sent him home and he is now doing a remote degree through the Open University, happily studying and enjoying life at home. He has friends with jobs who work from home, at least some of the time.

Why force kids into school? Why not embrace home learning and make it part of schooling?

Agreed, home schooling should be seen as a more mainstream option, for such parents as are able to provide that attention. A large-scale (and mainstreamed) assist program for parents to enable (mainstreamed) homeschooling would be a win-win for all parties concerned --- the state, the parents, and the kids themselves.

Also agreed, many schools --- not all, obviously, but some/many --- are actual hell. No child should be subjected to that kind of nonsense. (But of course, that's an argument for improving how those schools are run, and not necessarily for home schooling.)

 

[Nessie]

....
Taking children out of face to face teaching in schools will be a major mistake and a failure of government.

I am not arguing that remote teaching replaces face to face. I am arguing remote teaching should be an option for those who refuse to go to school for face to face teaching.

Remote teaching is surely better than no teaching.