Why more parents in China are turning to home-schooling

Good news!

Meet Irene Curie, the Nobel-winning atomic physicist who together with her husband discovered artificial radioactivity

Very recommendable! The many similarities between Marie Curie & Pierre Curie and Irene Curie &  Frederic Joliot are stunning!

She was homeschooled!

"The adage goes “like mother like daughter,” and in the case of Irene Joliot-Curie, truer words were never spoken. She was the daughter of two Nobel Prize laureates, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, and was herself awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935 together with her husband, Frederic Joliot.

While her parents received the prize for the discovery of natural radioactivity, Irene’s prize was for the synthesis of artificial radioactivity. This discovery changed many fields of science and many aspects of our everyday lives. Artificial radioactivity is used today in medicine, agriculture, energy production, food sterilization, industrial quality control and more. ...

World War I started in 1914, when Irene was only 17, and she interrupted her studies to help her mother find fragments of bombs in wounded soldiers using portable X-ray machines. She soon became an expert in these wartime radiology techniques, and on top of performing the measurements herself, she also spent time training nurses to use the X-ray machines.

After the war, Irene went back to her studies in her mother’s lab at the Radium Institute. This is where she met fellow researcher Frederic Joliot, whom she later married. The two worked together on many projects, which led them to their major breakthrough in 1934. ..."

Meet Irene Curie, the Nobel-winning atomic physicist who changed the course of modern cancer treatment

Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie shared the Nobel Prize in 1935. 

"In Irene and Frederic’s experiments, an isotope of aluminum was hit with an alpha particle (two neutrons and two protons bound together). The collision resulted in two protons and a neutron from the alpha particle binding to the aluminum, making it an isotope of phosphorus, which decayed, releasing a particle called a positron." 

"Scientists graph the known isotopes in the chart of nuclei. They have discovered roughly 3,000 radioisotopes (shown with cyan boxes) and predict the existence of another 4,000 radioisotopes (shown with gray boxes)."

Homeschooling Grows as Families Escape Failing Schools in North Carolina

Good news!

If I were a father today, I would perhaps do the same!

Homeschooling or remote learning has become so much easier with the Internet!

"North Carolina is one of the few states to keep detailed statistics on homeschoolers—who are famously resistant to scrutiny, and for good reason—and officials in the state recorded an interesting development this year. After dipping from a pandemic-era high when public schools were closed or generally making a poor job of remote learning, the ranks of homeschoolers have again begun to rise. With census figures showing similar growth elsewhere, we have further evidence that DIY education is here to stay.

Homeschooling Surges Again

In the Statistical Summary for Homeschools 2023–2024, compiled by the state’s Department of Administration, the number of registered K–12 homeschools in North Carolina stands at 96,529. Each school can serve more than one student, and the estimated number of homeschooled K–12 students is 157,642. That’s down from the peak of 112,614 registered homeschools serving an estimated 179,900 students during the chaos of 2020–2021, but up from 94,154 registered homeschools and 152,717 students last year. Before the pandemic, in 2019–2020, 94,863 homeschools served 149,173 students.

For K–12 private schools, enrollment is up from 126,678 in 2022–2023 to 131,230 in 2023–2024. In 2019–2020, before the pandemic, North Carolina private schools had 103,959 students enrolled.

By contrast, traditional public school enrollment is declining. ..."

Homeschooling Grows as Families Escape Failing Schools

What Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Mother Thought of Germany's Public Schools—and What She Did About It

Recommendable! On the importance of home schooling! Questioning the government mandate of compulsory public schooling!

Grateful for the advances of technology that make home schooling or other alternatives to government run schools for many parents much easier, affordable, and much better than ever before!

"... powerful character of Bonhoeffer’s mother, whom one cousin called “the soul and spirit of the house.” A devout woman, she had a deep-seated (and impressive) distrust of the German public school system, refusing to allow her children to attend them at a young age.

“She was openly distrustful of the German public schools and their Prussian educational methods. She subscribed to the maxim that Germans had their backs broken twice, once at school and once in the military, she wasn’t about to entrust her children to the care of others less sensitive than she during their earliest years.” ...
Paula understood the risks of educating her small, impressionable children in the state’s schools. A skilled teacher, she was able to educate her children herself, teaching them an assortment of hymns, poems, and folks songs. She also allowed them to learn and explore on their own in the natural environment around Breslau and in the Glatz Mountains near the Bohemian border where the family often vacationed. As a result, when her children did eventually enter the public school system—with a foundation of solid values—they excelled.

Unfortunately, a subsequent generation of German mothers would not have this luxury. In 1920, school attendance was made mandatory in Germany."

What Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Mother Thought of Germany's Public Schools—and What She Did About It Paula Bonhoeffer was 'openly distrustful' of the German public school system, and refused to son her small children into it.

Homeschooling Just Crossed the Tipping Point

I admire parents who commit themselves to teach their children at home.

Probably, never before in the history of mankind was it so easy to obtain excellent and high quality teaching and instructional material of all kinds like from the Internet. It is probably easier today than at anytime before to offer a profound and high quality schooling at home. It is not reserved for the affluent anymore or largely left to those parents, who had no other choices!

Why should the citizens leave the education of their children to the indoctrination by government? This aspect has reached a much higher level of attention since it becomes more obvious that leftist ideologies are spreading throughout the education institutions for children. More variety, less ideology in the education of our children please!

"... Recent data shows that as much as 11 percent of the population is homeschooling since COVID-19 hit. ...
A few years ago, homeschool students made up roughly 3 percent of the student population, making the tipping point a distant prospect. But as of fall 2020, 11.1 percent of school-age households nationwide reported homeschooling their children, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report. The homeschooling rate doubled in many states and tripled or quadrupled in others. ..."

Homeschooling Just Crossed the Tipping Point | Intellectual Takeout

Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children

Good news! The positive effects of a pandemic! Please teachers unions keep the public schools shut for longer! 😄 Long overdue to reduce government power and control over the schooling of our children!

Current technology makes it even easier to home school!

"... An estimated 3.3 percent of children were home schooled in 2016, up from 1.7 percent in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That share roughly tripled this year to nine percent, in an Education Week survey. Gallup agrees, finding that 10 percent of children are now being home schooled. ...
Many private schools, too, are seeing growth in enrollment. That comes after years of declines because of the Great Recession and the proliferation of charter schools which offer options without charging tuition. ..."

Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children – Reason.com Pandemic chaos is driving families to flee government institutions in search of education that better suits their needs.

How Micro-School Networks Expand Learning Options - Foundation for Economic Education

Centralized, industrial scale schooling of children in government run schools is so outdated in the digital and Internet age!

How Micro-School Networks Expand Learning Options - Foundation for Economic Education: Micro-schools are typically a fraction of the cost of a private school and educate no more than 10 to 15 students at a time. They are part of an educational shift occurring over the past decade in which entrepreneurs and parents create intimate, mixed-age learning spaces, often in homes or local organizations.

Home Schooling Is Prohibited In Germany

Posted: 3/5/2014  Updated: 1/16/2019

Update Of 1/16/2016

Just read The German Government Forcibly Removed These Children From Their Parents Over Homeschooling (dated 1/14/2019). A comment written by Robert Clarke, lead counsel in the case of Wunderlich v. Germany.

A very regrettable travesty in the annals of European jurisprudence! A week ago, the “European Court of Human Rights ... sided with Germany, reaffirming that Germany’s ban on homeschooling does not violate the family’s rights under international law … The German rationale is to prevent “parallel societies” from emerging. Lawyers representing the state presented this rationale to the European court without any evidence to support it as a theory.

We presented evidence to the contrary, showing that in countries with the longest history with homeschooling and the highest number of homeschoolers, the practice is tested, credible, and continues to grow.” (emphasis added)

Original/Revised Post

Trigger

I just read “The German Home-School Refugees Can Stay”. It is about a German family (the Romeikes) with many children who applied for asylum in the U.S. because homeschooling is prohibited by law and by the supreme court of Germany. The family is now allowed to permanently stay in the U.S.

Lady Liberty Is Smiling For Once

Given that the Statue of Liberty is inconsolably weeping since it was build, this is refreshing news for her.

Parents Ought To Decide Where And How Their Children Are Educated

In principle, it should be left to the parents to decide where they think their children will receive the best education whether it is private, public, or home schooling.

Any parents who decide to homeschool their children are to be commended for their efforts.

In Germany, the highest court of the land (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has decided against parents of homeschooling in favor of mandatory public schooling. What a miscarriage of justice! What an insult to liberty!

Education Reform In The 21st Century

Imminence & Scope Of Education Reform

In the meantime, most people who follow the news and recent technological advancements have come to realize that the pressure of radical reform of how individuals at any age will educate themselves or will be educated is imminent.

For over three thousand years human education has evolved. The transfer of knowledge from great teachers was enhanced by permanent storage of knowledge, the fast and widespread dissemination of knowledge, and constant discourse about knowledge by humans.

The Status Quo Of Human Education

The education of humans has evolved to become highly structured, sequentially phased, specialized and institutionalized. The class room setting is still the most common, standard mode of teaching. There are numerous barriers to entry. Education is largely organized by tracks.

Some typical characteristics of current education of humans:

1.       Students meet in a group at a specific physical location, at a specific time to be taught by a specially trained human professional.

2.       Students have to or need to specialize in some discipline fairly early on.

3.       There are certain times during a human’s life when they are expected to have completed a certain education.

4.       The progress of a student’s education is measured sequentially or certified in some prescribed way, e.g. by examinations, grades, degrees, certifications etc.

5.       Teaching is conducted by specially trained and certified people who often do this for a lifetime

Private education has been too a large extent displaced by public education with all its negative consequences. Government in many countries has essentially nationalized education.

Tabula Rasa Approach

People, who follow my blog (if there are any such people) know that I like this approach also called Gedankenexperiment (German for thought experiment). It opens up the mind and frees up the mind from unnecessary constraints. It allows e.g. to question anything in existence.

Some examples:

1.       College education in the US has almost become prohibitively expensive no matter how much federal government tries to subsidize it. During the Great Recession it became noticeable that a fine MBA or law school degree is not necessarily advantageous, but very expensive.

2.       What is the current measurement and certification of someone’s educational attainment useful for? We know that many high school/college drop outs are among the smartest and most accomplished people on earth.

3.       What does it prove if a person who has once in his life time written a doctoral thesis for which the person then received a Ph. D.? We know that many Ph. Ds. over their entire lifetime will achieve little more than an average non Ph. D. or they may turn out not to be really qualified for what they are doing.

4.       To be a professor is often a lifelong tenure. What is really the justification for that?

This list of examples could go on.

An Exciting Hypothetical New World

In the age of the Internet and the Cloud, the availability of ubiquitous computers of various sizes and power it would be conceivable that:

1.       Each child and its parents can be educated wherever they are, whenever they wish whatever subject over the Cloud and Internet

2.       For any adult of any age anywhere in the world to learn any subject at any time at any level of depth over the Cloud and Internet.

3.       Self education by any child or individual anywhere, any subject, and anytime will be available

4.       Educational contents can be prepared and delivered by anyone, anywhere, at any time who wishes to do so

5.       A borderless global marketplace of education evolves. Such a marketplace would certainly help to reduce the price and cost of education.

What are some of the implications?

·         Many, e.g. traditional brick and mortar schools (including universities) are kind of obsolete.

·         Just imagine potentially one single educational entity could provide and deliver the educational content for any conceivable discipline for the whole world.

·         Why should not educational content from Mongolia be available to children in Paris?

Premise Of Education Reform

Too many people on this planet, especially in Western countries, are still not well educated. They do not understand well the principles and benefits of individual liberty and responsibility. They do little understand freedom of contract or free market economy.

Bread and games (panem et circenses) are still too common in our societies since before the Romans. Too many people may have resigned or are apathetic about education and its many benefits. Or do powerful, vested interests think it better that way to leave many people uneducated?

Primary Goals Of Education Reform

1.       Significantly reduce the role, control, and influence of government in education. More private than public education. Government should not be in the business of providing or delivering education.

2.       The role of government should be very limited to e.g. quality control, minimum standard curricula etc.

3.       We need more experimentation and trial and error to figure out the future of education. Government, in general, is not helpful.

4.       More personalized, individual education instead of mass education. E.g. more home schooling than public education.

5.       Less emphasis on traditional measurement and certification of educational aptitude.

6.       The traditional distinction between institutions like primary, secondary education, high school, community college, university etc. are outdated. There should be fluid educational providers of any kind.

7.       Education in a linear, sequential, and track like fashion is outdated. E.g. there ought to be more fluidity between generalization and specialization and between disciplines or subjects at any time in an individual’s life.

8.       The traditional distinction between teacher/professor and student is outdated. Potentially anybody can be a teacher and any student can be a teacher. Thus, role reversals ought to be the norm. Probably, we ought to aspire more to mutual teaching and learning at any age, mix of ages and backgrounds.

Other, Related Blog Posts By This Author

Here about high school curricula. Here, here about history as a critical subject of education.