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I grew up homeschooled for my entire K-12 experience through the 2000s and 2010s and went to my fair share of homeschool conventions throughout it. (They're really popular and they always have separate events for the kids.)

There's no governing body for any of these curriculum. My science education would always change depending on the book. At one point, I was told that all the animals in the world were vegetarian before Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil then turned carnivorous. Another series of videos I received spent a literal hour and a half "dunking" on evolution before actually giving a much more valid argument for its existence. (I actually am trying to find a way to convert the crappy flash swf files into video so I can share the insanity if anyone knows how to do that. FFmpeg hath failed me.)

Math was less volatile but had its quirks. I had one curriculum (Life of Fred) that quite literally was made with crappy clipart and not really even written by a person who was qualified to make kids content. It was just purposely obtuse and my mother took me off of it once I wasn't making any progress on it. I made it through two of those books for what it's worth.

Economics and "stewardship" was also high-key Republican trickle down economics and one time they actually blamed social programs for causing the Great Depression.

But, all that said, I got a super advanced education that put me well ahead of most other kids my age and I'm only listing the worst aspects of Christian homeschool curricula. Generally, homeschooling (Christian or secular) is almost entirely dependent on the parent actually giving a crap about their kid's unique needs and strengths. At the very least, if you're going to homeschool (no, I don't mean charter school) your kid for an extended period, make sure that you're involved with activities with other kids and that you really look through what your kid is reading.

Home school is bad because:

• what people learn isn't controlled by official requirements
• to teach kids properly one need special type of education themselves not parent who comes home at in the evening.
• there is no diploma so getting job will be like "trust me bro, ima best"
• socialization between kids is important.

That being sad US is weird in some of these aspects and they are not properly fullfilled even at schools.

I'll be a rare beacon for somewhat positive home schooling. At least when I started it in the late 90s. Graduated highschool in 2000.

Yeah, there is a fair amount of religious nut jobs/conservatives when you get out in bufu, but my group was mostly kids with hippie parents and kids with learning disabilities that would have never thrived in public school.

Maybe our group was more social than some of these extremist religious groups, because I had plenty of friends and social interaction. Homeschool isn't always kids being locked away from society by crazy parents, sometimes it is the last option of a misfit child that would fail to thrive if forced into the mould of a model student.

The main thing that I missed out on, by not going to high school proper, was getting regularly bullied and the stress of having to hurry to the bus every morning. If homeschooling hadn't been an option I'd of just been a drop out.

I suppose a number of people would still consider me a drop out because I wasn't forced to suffer as they did.

Edit: I'll add that my group were mostly naturalist/scientist in learning. As far as I know there weren't any flat-earthers/creationists. Maybe I was lucky because of my geographic location.

Maybe things are different now, but that's how it was for me back in the 90s/2000s.

We’re in Missouri again. We are selling a lot of product — in fact, we had our first mother and son make a purchase so he could learn about Sacagawea. It made me happy.

It makes me very happy too. I'm going to end my night with this thought.

Literally every place where children are educated is a battleground for the political ideologies of the parents. I've seen the exact same stuff described in this article in public schools as well.

Homeschooling has increased by 51% nationwide, while public school attendance has decreased by 4%. Prepare to meet a lot more Karens and their snot-nosed monster kids.

Source: I have two young kids who aren't so bad

Fear of knowledge should be an incarceratable offence. Wilful ignorance is the true pandemic.

"Home is the cradle of the world's misinformation."

Great article, thanks

Sellers market with that group of people.