[extropy-chat] it's all understandable, except

[Ben Goertzel]

> Homeschooling is an excellent idea, in theory. In practice, there's
> the problem of wingnuts, who tend to homeschool in order to protect
> the poor young'n's from nefarious indoctrination (and fluoridization,
> which corrupts their precious body fluids).

Homeschooling worked well for my kids for a few years...

Unfortunately, I can't do it anymore due to having gotten divorced and
having only 50% custody of the kids ... these day, homeschooling would
require cooperation of my ex, which is unlikely to happen....

But while it lasted, it was pretty good.  The kids learned more, and
had more fun, and most critically their spirit of creativity and
independent exploration was encouraged rather than discouraged...

Now, my oldest son is at a good college; my middle child is in a
middle school that he really hates and learns litlte from; and my
daughter is in a magnet elementary school that is pretty academically
intensive but does little to allow let alone encourage independent
thought....  Of course, my kids will all grow up as creative and
independent thinkers anyway -- they spend a fair bit of their
non-school time reading, and doing creative projects....  But I still
think it sucks that they have to spend such a significant fraction of
their time in such a boring, mind-numbing environment.  I did it too,
during my childhood, and I thought it sucked at the time.  It is
survivable of course ... but why should this sort of ordeal be
necessary?

BTW, David Deutsch, the quantum computing pioneer, is a very radical
advocate of home schooling and children's liberation in general...

-- Ben G