Except that the notion of homeschooling is hugely co-opted by cultists who brainwash their kids. It's hard to get a serious dialogue on homeschooling going when most people equate it to a stand-in for Bible study and avoiding science education.
I've heard this said often enough, but most of the homeschoolers I actually know or know of indirectly are pretty lefty or libertarian. Most Christian extremists go to little private schools which are scattered all over the place.
This is a survey by the NHES, a government organization - do you think there is some reason for selection bias?
Here is the survey's remark on their estimation methodology:
"When applied to survey data, weights allow for the generation
of national estimates from a sample of respondents. They also
adjust for characteristics of the survey design, nonresponse,
and noncoverage. However, biases may exist in the data if
weighting procedures have not adequately adjusted for these
issues. A large-scale bias study was conducted in conjunction
with the 2007 data collection. Readers interested in the
findings of the bias study, as well as detailed information on
NHES survey methods, weighting, and response rates, can
refer to the Data File User’s Manuals published online at
http://nces.ed.gov/nhes ."
I think that the fact that the survey was conducted by a government organization and that the targets of the survey were families who had decided not to participate in government-run education, for one reason or another, makes a certain selection bias seem likely.
I'd expect a measure of homeschooling families to want nothing to do with the federal department of education.
I was homeschooled in 7th and 8th grade. It was totally because my parents thought I wasn't getting a good enough education. I still had hebrew school on sunday(jewish), but religion never entered my curriculum at home. I had a much greater focus on science & tech. (I had a programming "class" taught by my dad where I programmed micro-controllers)
edit:
(actually... It wasn't a heavier focus on science & tech... it was just more intense in general... I had a hefty literature portion (I read many Dickens books...) and some sweet art history books)
I've no idea to what extent homeschooling has been co-opted by 'cultists', but I think it's a fair statement to say that families who engage in the practice do so out of some mistrust of the prevailing institutional model of education for one reason or another, and that it may be relatively likely that, for the same reasons, they're unwilling to allow their children's education to be the subject of some public 'dialogue'.
A big part of a child's success in school has to do with parental involvement. Home schooled children, almost by definition, have highly involved parents. It would be interesting to compare home schooled children with regular children whose parents are actively involved in their education to see how that matched up.
Traditional schools are built on an industrial batch model where the goal is to get a certain percentage of the class to basic competency. So students are grouped in classes, taught for a semester, graded, and then moved on.
The Khan and homeschool model, in contrast is the mastery model. Students are individually taught at their own pace. They are not graded and pushed on. Instead they keep learning a topic until they know it. In traditional classroom education, the learning is variable while the time to learn is constant. Khan makes the learning constant and varies the time. Some students will learn faster than others, but all students learn to a high standard.
Khan is not just delivering a better classroom. He is offering a wholly different model of education.
To over-generalize: one-on-one teaching results in results that are about 2 standard deviations better than normal. Home schooling results are about 1 standard deviation better than normal.
This does not sound like an argument against home schooling. If it sounds unfair, that's kind of the point.
My issue with home schooling is the lack of variety and specialization. With only one teacher, the child just isn't going to be exposed to as many viewpoints as they would in a traditional school setting.
Homeschooling and un-schooling are actually quite varied. Un-schooling, specifically, is usually very specialized. Take Erik Demaine, for instance. He is the youngest professor in MIT's history - he was un-schooled until he entered college at 12. He specialized in mathematics because he loved it.
Homeschooling is still regulated by the state. Students must still pass certain tests, and often homeschoolers have a community of parents and children who get together to learn with each other at educational events geared specifically to their education. Both models have evolved, though they still have some cons. So, too, do public and private schools. Personally, I'd like to see us picking the best parts of various educational systems and putting them together.
2) Betabeat only reported that this forum existed and that someone had made these claim, which is indisputably correct. You may think it's not particularly news worthy, but online journalism is a big places and there's plenty of room for everything.
(Note: this post represents my own opinions, not anyone else's)
No, but they normally report the vulnerabilities they find.
I participate in a lot of responsible disclosure programs (Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Dropbox, Twitter, Etsy, etc). All of those programs dictate that you report the security vulnerabilities you find, and that you not abuse them.
What was described in the blog post sounds a lot like real security audits that I've seen done. However, the difference is that those audits are done by professional security researchers who have been hired by the company for that purpose. If you're an outside security researcher you have to abide by a very different set of standards. Common sense would argue those standards include abiding by the company's responsible disclosure policy.
The feds are trying to have the servers wiped and evidence destroyed. Dotcom has tried to stop this as he believes the evidence on the servers is crucial for his defense.
The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.
> The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.
That is absolutely disgusting.
Let me get this straight - their logic is 'These guys did something illegal, and you have evidence that they didn't commit the crime in your possession. You need to destroy the evidence, because we're planning on charging you as an accomplice to that same crime.'
Well, great for him! Many a programmer started this way. IMO it's one of the best motivation ever to start programming, and to actually learn stuff (you try to make a game, and suddenly maths and physics become interesting).
I know i started out that way. Then I realized that I could do a lot more with a lot less work in web programming. Games are hard and the payoff is much less compared to, say, making a web app.
Unfortunately most people don't understand that video games are one of the more difficult things to program. I know many people who start Comp Sci as a major and then quit as soon as they get past Java 101 (or some that quit before).
I second this idea. The old Klik-n-Play program contributed to my inspiration when I was a kid, and the license agreement forbidding distribution of my creations helped motivate me to continue to learn to code. My next step after Klik-n-Play and QuickBasic was Allegro and DJGPP.
