Note: This week I will be working with some friends to start making several thousand pages of curriculum available to home schoolers. I believe this can be done for the cost of a single textbook.
Mar 5, 2023·edited Mar 5, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford
1000 likes. We homeschool 6 for $1800.00/year total (for core curriculum not counting music/sports/field trips etc.) we have a student/teacher ratio of 1-1/2 to 6 (lol) and see good results with our one-on-one tutoring methods. I know a lot of public student $$$ goes into infrastructure, but still, quality education could be had for much less if parents were paid to do it.
However, I’m so leery of govt $$ because strings are always attached. We almost joined an online charter school which had available tax money and would have covered a lot of our costs, but I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Sure enough a few years later the govt started mandating all kind of things for the students to continue getting the govt money. Glad we never joined.
Heck, as a grandparent who homeschooled grandkids, I have to say, those were some of the best years of my life! Field trips, beach when others were tied up in school, museums, reading aloud all sorts of classic age appropriate literature….what a great time! Time with my grandkids, yes!
Mar 5, 2023·edited Mar 5, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford
Yes, and imagine what parents could do, freed from the politics and propaganda, using those resources to genuinely inform, educate and uplift their children. We need to take all this back.
I homeschooled for 7 years. Here is a breakdown 40% were former lawyers, doctors and career professionals, 40% were former teachers. I think the former teachers ratio says a lot. It means they saw behind the curtain and knew the importance of not turning over their education to the system. Random note: a majority of them had IT husbands.
They were all FASCINATING people with many interests and were strong and ethically minded.
It was very rare that I met someone that society would caricaturize : a dumb backwards mom that doesn't let their kids look out the windows. Honestly I may have met one or two. And that was it. All the kids were very socialized. They were able to talk to adults because we lived life in the real world, going to the store together, the post office. the church and they talked to kids outside of their age group. People always remarked how unusual it was for kids to talk with adults without animosity or timidness. Homeschoolers are part of co-ops, fields trips, church groups and more. They actually get more real socialization than public school kids.
During this journey of the last 3 years, I question many ways the culture has painted people. Anti-vaxxers were dumb blond vegetarians former actress types. I now see, that was intentional so that you wouldn't actually listen to their argument.
Now, I public school now for various reasons . In the beginning, my kids come home and at least were very aware of the indoctrination they were putting out there, and we would laugh about it, the obviousness of it all.
If you want your kids to be brave, independent and critical thinkers.
Homeschool. It's worth every inconvenience or missed luxury item.
I don't have kids and am not having kids. I recently have some weird gratitude for people having kids. Must be because I am close to 50! And I would love to be part of a community of people raising kids with intention! And it used to be some crazy number of people raised a child, like 5. We had multigenerational homes, and small k it communities where people communally spent time. Now, we have isolation. That's the true pandemic. I was talking with a patient who did this "I was raised in poverty (he now lives in a upper middle class life). I can recall when we didn't have power or it was cold out, my mom turned on the over and all 13 of us slept in the kitchen. We played games (not electronic!). It was the best.". As I listened, I pined for that sort of closeness that this current living lacks.
Yes. Our little parent run private school in Ontario has been challenged with the social crisis and taken over by the radical left covid heavies that used public health authorities to push the agenda . It’s been around for 30 years . Passing the school to another generation of parents while maintaining the ethos . Eventually , with the crisis the elder families and teachers of the school got pushed out by this new group that has little respect for the ethos or history of the school and instead want it to be what they thought and envisioned it to be . And kind of corporate with lack of transparency and inclusion despite outwardly left washing their actions . I see I am being triggered here .
The point is our family
Can not afford to pay a gentrified vision nor be complicit in such a lack of integrity . So we now are looking to put our energy to the alternatives .
This in part Mathew is how this idea I referred to came up around how to organize labor exchange through a platform.
I think educating our own children is much like the issues of using technology to distract children for busy parents . When we spend the time necessary from the get go , raising children gets easier , not harder . When we put it off and use things to distract them then the entire family falls behind and becomes difficult to catch up. So, if we spend the time to educate out children and commit to it , it gets easier and we have agency in directing the world
That we can be spending this much per child, not getting one-on-one tutoring, and are only getting the dismal results we are getting, screams of insanity. Yet we'll continue on...
It’s never a good idea to take money from the government, homeschoolers have avoided this idea for years because it allows the government to have a say in what you do then.
Trojan horse. If we let the government give us money, then we let the government tell us what to do. Homeschooling is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, nothing the government touches stays excellent. And yes, once parents start getting money the government will start to direct how and what they teach.
Since homeschooling frees a family from dependence on "good schools" they can move to locations with low property taxes. I am all for eliminating property taxes altogether, but I don't see that happening. School expenses, and schools themselves, are a metastasized cancer that is killing our country.
A lovely thought, but just that. There isn’t a legislative body anywhere in the US that would vote to permit such a thing. Not that they should have any say in the matter, but they do.
“Santa Clara County Office of Education spends $121,722 per student each year. It has an annual revenue of $285,668,000. Overall, the district spends an unspecified amount on instruction, an unspecified amount on support services and an unspecified amount on other expenses.”
Note: This week I will be working with some friends to start making several thousand pages of curriculum available to home schoolers. I believe this can be done for the cost of a single textbook.
I've been saying this for years!
Taxation is social engineering theft and is used to dumb down via "education" more at indoctrination centers.
Create local school co-ops -- the quality of learning will be far superior.
It's like Little House on the Prairie where communities take back control of their education, or local crowdsourcing.
1000 likes. We homeschool 6 for $1800.00/year total (for core curriculum not counting music/sports/field trips etc.) we have a student/teacher ratio of 1-1/2 to 6 (lol) and see good results with our one-on-one tutoring methods. I know a lot of public student $$$ goes into infrastructure, but still, quality education could be had for much less if parents were paid to do it.
However, I’m so leery of govt $$ because strings are always attached. We almost joined an online charter school which had available tax money and would have covered a lot of our costs, but I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Sure enough a few years later the govt started mandating all kind of things for the students to continue getting the govt money. Glad we never joined.
Heck, as a grandparent who homeschooled grandkids, I have to say, those were some of the best years of my life! Field trips, beach when others were tied up in school, museums, reading aloud all sorts of classic age appropriate literature….what a great time! Time with my grandkids, yes!
Yes, and imagine what parents could do, freed from the politics and propaganda, using those resources to genuinely inform, educate and uplift their children. We need to take all this back.
I homeschooled for 7 years. Here is a breakdown 40% were former lawyers, doctors and career professionals, 40% were former teachers. I think the former teachers ratio says a lot. It means they saw behind the curtain and knew the importance of not turning over their education to the system. Random note: a majority of them had IT husbands.
They were all FASCINATING people with many interests and were strong and ethically minded.
It was very rare that I met someone that society would caricaturize : a dumb backwards mom that doesn't let their kids look out the windows. Honestly I may have met one or two. And that was it. All the kids were very socialized. They were able to talk to adults because we lived life in the real world, going to the store together, the post office. the church and they talked to kids outside of their age group. People always remarked how unusual it was for kids to talk with adults without animosity or timidness. Homeschoolers are part of co-ops, fields trips, church groups and more. They actually get more real socialization than public school kids.
During this journey of the last 3 years, I question many ways the culture has painted people. Anti-vaxxers were dumb blond vegetarians former actress types. I now see, that was intentional so that you wouldn't actually listen to their argument.
Now, I public school now for various reasons . In the beginning, my kids come home and at least were very aware of the indoctrination they were putting out there, and we would laugh about it, the obviousness of it all.
If you want your kids to be brave, independent and critical thinkers.
Homeschool. It's worth every inconvenience or missed luxury item.
I’M IN!
I was lucky to be able to home school all 4 of our kids.
It paid huge dividends forward into their futures.
Mathew, I wish I had known about you 20 years ago!😁
I don't have kids and am not having kids. I recently have some weird gratitude for people having kids. Must be because I am close to 50! And I would love to be part of a community of people raising kids with intention! And it used to be some crazy number of people raised a child, like 5. We had multigenerational homes, and small k it communities where people communally spent time. Now, we have isolation. That's the true pandemic. I was talking with a patient who did this "I was raised in poverty (he now lives in a upper middle class life). I can recall when we didn't have power or it was cold out, my mom turned on the over and all 13 of us slept in the kitchen. We played games (not electronic!). It was the best.". As I listened, I pined for that sort of closeness that this current living lacks.
Yes. Our little parent run private school in Ontario has been challenged with the social crisis and taken over by the radical left covid heavies that used public health authorities to push the agenda . It’s been around for 30 years . Passing the school to another generation of parents while maintaining the ethos . Eventually , with the crisis the elder families and teachers of the school got pushed out by this new group that has little respect for the ethos or history of the school and instead want it to be what they thought and envisioned it to be . And kind of corporate with lack of transparency and inclusion despite outwardly left washing their actions . I see I am being triggered here .
The point is our family
Can not afford to pay a gentrified vision nor be complicit in such a lack of integrity . So we now are looking to put our energy to the alternatives .
This in part Mathew is how this idea I referred to came up around how to organize labor exchange through a platform.
I think educating our own children is much like the issues of using technology to distract children for busy parents . When we spend the time necessary from the get go , raising children gets easier , not harder . When we put it off and use things to distract them then the entire family falls behind and becomes difficult to catch up. So, if we spend the time to educate out children and commit to it , it gets easier and we have agency in directing the world
That we can be spending this much per child, not getting one-on-one tutoring, and are only getting the dismal results we are getting, screams of insanity. Yet we'll continue on...
It’s never a good idea to take money from the government, homeschoolers have avoided this idea for years because it allows the government to have a say in what you do then.
Trojan horse. If we let the government give us money, then we let the government tell us what to do. Homeschooling is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, nothing the government touches stays excellent. And yes, once parents start getting money the government will start to direct how and what they teach.
Since homeschooling frees a family from dependence on "good schools" they can move to locations with low property taxes. I am all for eliminating property taxes altogether, but I don't see that happening. School expenses, and schools themselves, are a metastasized cancer that is killing our country.
As a SAHM of preschoolers who makes $0 I approve
A lovely thought, but just that. There isn’t a legislative body anywhere in the US that would vote to permit such a thing. Not that they should have any say in the matter, but they do.
“Santa Clara County Office of Education spends $121,722 per student each year. It has an annual revenue of $285,668,000. Overall, the district spends an unspecified amount on instruction, an unspecified amount on support services and an unspecified amount on other expenses.”
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/california/districts/santa-clara-county-office-of-education-108319
Are you familiar with Peter Gray?
He’s a real educator and education expert in my opinion.
I think you will find this interesting, maybe even useful.
https://youtu.be/AQLkKKERWsI
Much love, as always