Welcome And The Verdict

Brycen 0:01

Two sides, but only one verdict. Welcome to a case for debate podcast. Hello and welcome back to a case for debating podcast. Joining us today as a guest is Sheldon. Are you excited to be on the seventh episode, Sheldon?

Sheldon 0:35

For sure. For sure. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Brycen 0:38

Okay,

Standardized Testing Vote Results

Brycen 0:39

so we are going to jump right in to the voting form results for last week. So this episode was titled A Case for Helpful or Stressful: the Standardized Test Debate. So me and my neighbor Lincoln discussed whether standardized testing was a good choice or just a stressful choice that made kids have anxiety. So, Sheldon, do you have a guess on who might have won that episode?

Sheldon 1:25

I would say probably um people voted that standardized testing was unnecessary.

Brycen 1:32

So your answer is actually incorrect. We had three responses last week, so hopefully a few more people will vote on the voting forum next week. And a hundred percent of people voted for team standardized testing. So 100% of people believe that standardized testing was a good choice for schools.

Homeschooling Debate Setup

Brycen 2:00

Sheldon, would you like to introduce what our topic is for this week?

Sheldon 2:06

We're gonna be discussing whether homeschooling is a better alternative to traditional schooling.

Brycen 2:13

Okay. Sheldon actually came up with this episode idea. So Sheldon will be supporting the side that homeschooling is a better alternative, and I will be defending regular schooling and how homeschooling has different flaws in it. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Personalized Learning And Parent Time

Brycen 2:52

Okay, Sheldon, would you like to go ahead and start the debate with some core arguments?

Sheldon 2:59

So I think one of the main benefits of homeschooling is that there's only one person who's learning. When you go to school, like there's 29 in most schools, 20 other students with their own strengths and weaknesses. But when you get homeschooled, there's only one kid. So you can really focus on something. For example, if I was really good at math or something, but I was awful at LA, then I could really focus on English as compared to when everyone else in the class they would have what they were good at and what they were not as strong as.

Brycen 3:34

Yeah, that would be really good, but homeschooling is a big time commitment for parents. So many parents don't have time to dedicate that focused effort and even pros at homeschooling, like it takes hours to plan and execute these lesson plans for only one student. So it's a big time commitment. And unlike other teachers, I know they're not getting paid much, but a homeschooled teacher would not get paid at all.

Sheldon 4:11

Yeah, that's that's a good point. But when you're getting homeschooled, at the same time, you can also get a tutor while having the flexibility. Like homeschooling doesn't only mean your parent is going to be teaching you, and likewise, kids who go to school as well also have tutors. Um, so they're also spending time on that one-on-one education.

Brycen 4:34

So that would work for a lot of families, but there are also families who who it's too expensive to purchase those educational resources that they need to to make the homeschooling and the schoolwork that they do actually worth it, and for the student to actually learn. So for a lot for some families, that doesn't actually work.

Social Life And Making Friends

Brycen 5:03

And another big point I wanted to touch on is when you're homeschooled, it often lacks social interactions. But when you're at a normal school, half of school is going and seeing other people and making friends with other people and like doing things at recess. Whereas if you're homeschooled, oftentimes you don't have as much of that, and it can be harder to make friends.

Sheldon 5:31

Yeah, that's a really good point. I guess I'll respond in two parts. So the part about homeschooling being expensive, like you can also take advantage in homeschooling of like public libraries, free educational resources, or parent-led instruction, which can mitigate the costs. You can only get tutors for subjects that you really need work on. So you can really save money while being homeschooled. And in regards to the socialization, you can also get social interaction outside of homeschooling. For example, if you participated in a sport, a club, in a community activity, or there I know there's like homeschool groups where a group of people getting homeschooled also work together. I think that is pretty uh adequate for socialization. I also found a 2022 uh review that found preliminary evidence of comparable or better social emotional outcomes among homeschoolers compared to kids going to traditional schooling.

Brycen 6:34

Yeah, that's really good if you're in a group like this, uh, then you would be able to get more of this. Probably oftentimes they might not be able to do something like that.

College Path And Learning Gaps

Brycen 6:52

And another thing I wanted to touch on is if you're homeschooled in like elementary school or even like middle school, would you actually be homeschooled up into college? Because you would need a lot of skill to homeschool someone until college, and then going to college apart from the learning also gives a very good experience for a kid that is nearing adulthood. And with homeschooling, there could be potential gaps in learning, kind of related to what I was just saying. Like many parents may be hesitant to consider homeschooling a good idea if they don't think they have uh enough years of experience to teach. So, yes, you could get a tutor if they're blanking in some spots, but sometimes they might not know, and their kid could be getting less education than they should be.

Sheldon 8:02

Yeah, that's a good point. But I think that there is a difference between a homeschooler getting a completely ineffective education and a homeschooler that is still having academic growth in areas. Homeschooling does not establish that traditional schools will always perform better academically. Um, because a well-organized homeschool can use like a regular curriculum, have assessments and regular feedback. But another

Bullying Stress And Mental Health

Sheldon 8:33

thing I wanted to say was that when kids are homeschooled, a lot of data shows that one of the main issues with going to school is the social pressures of going to school. Like socialization can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Um, like bullying or the stress of having to wake up every day at 7 a.m. I think that this is a common issue. I know that there is a certain amount of people that go to school who do struggle with depression and mental health issues and anxiety. So I think homeschooling is a good alternative to mitigating those risks.

Brycen 9:11

That is a good point, but before I give you my uh counter, I do have a question for you. If someone was homeschooled later on, like middle school and elementary school, like I was saying, do you think they'd be homeschooled all the way through college?

Sheldon 9:28

I think it depends on the student. If the student struggles with interaction, is especially academically gifted in an area, it might make sense academically for them to be homeschooled their entire educational career. But there are also benefits of only being homeschooled for a certain period of time.

Brycen 9:48

Yeah, so uh I think once you're homeschooled later on, it would be a little bit harder to then jump off into a full school setting where there's a lot of other kids and potential social stuff that could be bad or affect them. Kids need to learn how to deal with that. And if they uh were homeschooled all through college, I think that might greatly affect how their full personality is later in life.

Sheldon 10:27

Yeah, that's a good point. But homeschoolers can also develop like good time management, independence, and problem solving through deadlines, projects, and coursework. If they have a good academic instructor and they have a certain level of responsibility, I think that you can both get the benefits of schooling, which is the growth and the having trained professionals teaching you while also not being in an unsafe learning environment and getting that individualized one-on-one instruction.

Brycen 11:03

Yeah, I agree with that, and that could be a way that homeschooling would work. Another thing that kind of relates back to what you said a little earlier. You said they could join things like a club or something, but I think it does kind of propose a lack of extracurricular activities because it would be harder. I'm not saying it would be impossible. There's still probably a ton of options, but it would be harder to get an extracurricular activity like they would be able to possibly get at a normal school.

Sheldon 11:51

Yeah, but the thing is, kids that go to a normal school also are able to schedule extracurriculars and the things after school that really develop their social and emotional growth. So there's no reason that a normal homeschooler couldn't do the same. And I'm struggling to understand how might a school be incredibly effective in having a differing social growth for a kid compared to when they get homeschooled.

Brycen 12:26

Yeah, so as I said before, I think they would have trouble with social growth if they weren't in part like part of one of these groups or if they didn't have connections with other friends, like neighbors or something, because it could be harder to find people if you're not seeing a ton of people at school every day.

Sheldon 12:52

Yeah, but if a family is able to consistently schedule an after-school activity or an extracurricular over the course of maybe every week or maybe twice a week, for example, I think that also allows consistency in seeing the same person every single day despite not going to school.

Brycen 13:14

So yeah, I get that. Also, going back to like to prepare you for the real world, if you don't have these stressful times and this anxiety earlier in life, and later in life when you're at work and you have these strict deadlines for a project or other things or trouble with like people or peer groups later in life, if you didn't learn how to deal with this and develop social intelligence earlier in life, which I know like the social intelligence part is you're probably gonna say that like you could do it in one of these clubs, but it would be harder, I think, to be prepared for the real world if you were homeschooled in some ways.

Accountability And Homeschool Oversight

Sheldon 14:12

I think the fact that homeschoolers don't have that social responsibility because nobody's like watching them and making sure that they're actually doing the work. That is a problem with homeschooling, but I don't think that it's an inevitable result. I think students who are being homeschooled can still use planners, they can still complete independent projects and do regular assessments to make sure that they uh stay accountable. Uh, students can gradually take ownership of their own uh schedules, assignments, and learning goals. In fact, homeschooling could actually require students to develop greater independence because they must manage more of their own time, uh, because somebody's responsibility is determined by whether that student is expected to actually manage the work and complete it effectively rather than attending school.

Brycen 15:12

Yeah, that's amazing if you're doing it right like that. But in many states, homeschooling is more of an honor system. So in some states, there's no mandatory check-in from an outside professional. So if you have parents that are actually fully dedicated to this, you if there's a high possibility that you could just fall behind in something and no one would help you if they're not doing checks like this. So I know this would be good if you're doing it right, but it's easy for some families not to do that because in a lot of states there's no checks or anything that you have to pass.

Sheldon 16:06

That's a very good point that homeschoolers aren't typically and homeschooling parents aren't typically always following a standard. But I think at the end of the day, it is the parents' choice, it is the tutor's choice on how they want to approach educating their children. If they feel like that this certain approach is most effective, you should just let them because if they think that homeschooling is going to be a better alternative than going to school, it is ultimately the parent that is going to make that decision that homeschooling should be done. Uh so if they feel like that while they're homeschooling the child is not being held accountable, they can always implement whatever they want. But if they think that they're not if they're being held too accountable, for example, they can also do whatever they want. So it's really up to the parent on how they approach educating their child.

Brycen 17:01

That's a great point, Sheldon. Um,

Fan Mail And Post Show Break

Brycen 17:04

that will end the time for our main episode. As usual, we'll be right back with the post show after this message from Henry talking about fan mail.

Henry 17:26

Hi, it's Henry. I would like a moment to talk about our new feature, fan mail. Fan mail is a feature where you can send voicemails or text messages on our website directly to the show. We love hearing from our listeners and it's what makes podcasting so special. Let's get into the post show.

Brycen 17:56

Today

Can Parents Teach Advanced Math

Brycen 17:57

we will be talking about if our parent could actually teach us above calculus or even advanced math. So the kind of title of this post show is Could Your Parents Actually Teach Trick? So, Sheldon, what do you think would happen if one of your parents tried to teach you a super advanced math? And where do you think they it would break your household?

Sheldon 18:29

I think a lot a lot of advanced math. I've done a little bit of advanced math before. I think a lot of it is about like building the the level of difficulty. Like first, if my parent were to teach me, it would start by like the base principles of the calculus, for example, and then they would uh move on to like something that incorporates those principles, and then and then and then we would get to the advanced math.

Brycen 19:00

What level of math do you think would uh completely stump your parents and uh confuse everyone?

Sheldon 19:10

Okay. They could probably teach like without studying again, they could probably teach up to like pre-calculus.

Brycen 19:19

Yeah. I think my mom could teach me pre-calculus. If uh probably not calculus.

Sheldon 19:26

Uh calculus would be a scratch for my parents. They'd have to like look at the books again.

Brycen 19:31

What do you think would happen if they tried to teach you really advanced sciences?

Sheldon 19:37

It also dep it also depends on the science. Like if it's physics, a lot of it is just math, so my parents could probably teach that. But if it's life science and like biology or something, and there's all these random terms and random definitions and all of this like stuff all over the place in life science, I highly doubt they would be able to teach that.

Brycen 19:58

What would be the exact math unit or the exact science unit where your parents would completely break?

Sheldon 20:08

Uh once they got to can calculus, like uh maybe graphing science, probably they could probably do most of physics, because uh physics is a lot of calculating and calculations, and life science probably like after the first vocabulary word.

Brycen 20:27

Okay, so this episode will be interesting. We're

Producer Joins With Science Question

Brycen 20:32

gonna have our producer, Henry Gifford, unmute himself and we will ask him a post-show question. Okay, I am ready for the post-show question. Okay, now for science. Do you think your parents would be able to teach any science? Like, would they be able to teach life science, biology, physics, astronomy? What do you think?

Henry 21:01

Oh, um, yeah, so my mom could probably teach me a bunch about life science. She used to be a nurse in a hospital, so she could probably teach me a lot about how animals and humans work, and then my dad could also teach me a lot about things, particularly um the vascular system.

Brycen 21:26

I have another question for Sheldon. So if you had no studying and someone handed you a calculus test right now, how long before you think you would just start writing down random letters and crying?

Sheldon 21:48

First of all, uh I don't cry because of math, but whatever, that's irrelevant. I I think so. I'm taking geometry right now. I took algebra 2 beforehand, and the algebra 2 book was like from the 2000s, like a while ago. So the standards I know have gone down. Like then to algebra 2 is like now is pre-calculus. So I could probably do most of pre-calculus because when I did algebra 2 last year, they uh we did a modern day pre-calculus exam, and I knew most of the answers to that. And my geometry is not as strong. So if the calculus incorporates geometry and like is significantly more difficult than like pre-calculus, then maybe after like a fifth question. I don't know, it depends on the question.

Brycen 22:39

Okay, so this was a really fun episode. Uh before we go, thank you, Henry, for talking a little bit about fan

Closing Thanks And Fan Mail Ask

Brycen 22:52

mail. We had no fan mail last week. It would make us so happy if you uh sent us fan mail. And Sheldon, would you like to say anything before the episode ends?

Sheldon 23:06

Thank you for having me. This was really fun.

Brycen 23:08

Okay. Thank you for listening to our post show, and we will see you next week.