MillieF

Former Lancastrian

Is homeschooling legal? What does the law say about it?

Yes, homeschooling is legal in all Canadian provinces and territories.

In Ontario, the Education Act states the following under Section 21(2)(a):

a person is excused from attendance at school if [...] the person is receiving satisfactory instruction at home or elsewhere.

https://ontariohomeschool.org/about-...ing-faq/#legal

While it’s always been legal in every province in Canada for parents to take the primary responsibility for the education of their children when they are of compulsory school age, only three provinces—Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia—provide any financial support to parents who choose this educational option.

dbd33

It's common for male children around here not to be educated. Girls are taught arithmetic and so are able to buy and sell while boys are farm/construction muscle and don't need book learning.

MillieF

Oink

It depends on which province and school district you're in, but in general, compared to the UK, they are much more relaxed about attendance and less prescriptive about home schooling. For various cultural and economic reasons Canada is less rigorousness and competitive than the UK.

scilly

BC is rather strange ............ the province requires that all children be registered in school, therefore a home-schooled child has to be registered with wither a public or a private school by September 30 each year, but does not have to attend said school.

Home schooling does not have to follow the provincial curriculum and the child does not have to take provincial exams.

However, a home schooled child is not eligible to receive a BC Dogwood Graduation Certificate which is given to every child who graduates from Grade 12 with a minimum of 80 credits

Shard

In England, my impression from media reports is that home schooling can also be ''left to their own devices" (quite literally, in this day and age). I think some kind of educational plan has to be agreed with the local authority, but that there's a very wide range of what constitutes education, and that whatever is in such plans is not enforced.

I don't see a major problem with not educating some kids in a school system, other than perhaps reduced opportunities for socialization. The internet has changed access to knowledge and in the coming decades AI is going to remove much of the need for expert knowledge anyway.

dbd33

I don't think it's optimal for society as a whole. The children local to us who are not educated are not exposed to the internet and so have an outlook limited to farming and construction work. It's possible that some of those boys, if exposed to numbers, could be great economists or tax avoidance wizards or something similarly valuable.

Shard

You're saying society is going to be increasingly short of economists and taxation wizards? I think there is a strong argument for giving young people an educational foundation, simply for cognitive betterment and maybe social awareness, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as essential as it was a few decades ago.

Perhaps school could be a "learning camp" until the mid teens, and then those academically inclined could continue in higher education and others go off to Bali to pad their Instagram account. You're in IT, don't you see a major wave of white collar automation on the horizon? I'm increasingly of the view that we are educating kids for jobs and roles that won't exist in 20 years time.

dbd33

Well, those examples of jobs with numbers were, perhaps, a bit extreme. Nonetheless, I do think it problematic that it's acceptable here for boys not to have numeric concepts. What if, for example, they wanted to work a phone; you can't count on all phones having been set up with pictures of the people you want to talk to and besides, the uneducated are religious, they're inbred to the point of all looking the same.

I don't see white collar automation as being an issue related to education in the west. The people who develop such technologies aren't from the around here. The sales people are but the workers are in India or China or in the US on H-1Bs or Canada while they're ineligible for an H-1B. Lots of jobs will be around for the foreseeable future but few of them can be performed without education; carpentry, for example, has been around since before Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain, it'll be around for a long time to come. It requires numeracy and the ability to translate measurements between real and metric values on the fly. Doctoring has some arithmetic involved, you need some education for that. Farrier, plumber, anything medical, furnace repair, design engineer (real things, not computery stuff), artist, lyricist, prostitute, butcher, baker, artisan candlestick maker, lawyer, lots of jobs will still need doing,

I wouldn't suggest that anyone set about learning computer systems development now, any more than I'd say, "sure, go and lead a big band" but a knowledge of computer technology is as valuable as, say, being able to play the trombone - developing the skill develops the mind in general and the concepts may usefully be deployed for other purposes.

Shard

Hmmm, you kinda mist my gist, but I agree carpentry and many of the jobs you listed will still need doing. As for the Amish boys, yes if course they should receive a basic education. I suppose the lack of education is what perpetuates that cult.

raindropsandroses

Theoretically yes, it would be fairly easy for people to "home educate" and do nothing with their kids, but the reality is that for those of that persuasion, it's just much easier to let the school bus pick them up and take them to school.

A lot of people try homeschooling for a year and then run away screaming. An even greater amount, IME, turn to homeschooling because the school and school board has failed their child in one way or another. Kids with addition needs are often not catered to well in traditional school, kids who are badly bullied etc.

I don't think education should be a one size fits all system, kids aren't just bricks in the wall. Some kids will do better being homeschooled, some will do better being in a traditional school.


​​

dbd33

I have no specific expertise but do have some children. I find it hard to imagine how homeschooling could work. How do you deal with these issues:

Limit of parental imagination. One of my children is an accomplished sailor and a crown attorney dealing with the law of the sea. This path started when a fellow high school pupil said to her "we count as inner-city kids, the city will pay for us to go sailing, let's do it". I thought sailing was for the rich, I would never have introduced her to it. How would a parent match the breadth of ideas of a whole class of students?

Limit of funding. In order to homeschool, one parent must stay home so the household is cash deficient compared to the neighbours. Where does the money for the same activities as the kids next door come from?

Limit of socialisation: the homeschooled kids are the weird ones on the block, how do they overcome that with their peers (assuming they meet other children)?

Limit of exposure: How do homeschooled kids meet autistic children, children of other races, gay children, children of weird(er) religions?

Limit of parental expertise: schools have multiple teachers, they know different stuff. Is the homeschooling parent best at maths, physics, literature, music, French and German?

Lack of sports: team sports need multiple children, does the home schooler have to have 11 kids and know other homeschoolers with 11 children?

Limit of tolerance: one can love one's children without wanting 24/7 contact with them. How does the homeschooler avoid choking them?

I hate workplace nepotism, not because it cheats the peers of the favoured children but because it cheats the children themselves of chances they may have had. Homeschooling seems like nepotism squared (times itself, for anyone homeschooled by a writer not a sum doer).

raindropsandroses

scrubbedexpat091

I would likely have done better home schooled, as school was a negative experience and constant bullying meant I learned little and spent most of the day trying to avoid other students.

I had no friends.

I did not participate in sports.

I was not liked by the other kids so no socialization as I spent lunch alone or in the teacher lounge.

​​​​​​I can certainly see how home school might be more beneficial vs traditional school.

School can be very bad negative and poor environment for some.