I got something equivalent to a "GED" in my country. I just took a bunch of easy tests when I was 18. I was undiagnosed with ADHD and couldn't handle school anymore. It was like hitting a concrete...
I got something equivalent to a "GED" in my country. I just took a bunch of easy tests when I was 18. I was undiagnosed with ADHD and couldn't handle school anymore. It was like hitting a concrete wall with my bare hands. The accumulated trauma of failure after failure since a young age demolished me. I barely even had the motivation to take the GED "classes" and tests. My father had to drive me there and, I am not sure, but I think there was some corruption involved because he knew the director of the testing center. All I know is that I didn't study a single day and 2 weeks later I had my high-school diploma. It felt like a failure.
I have a recurring nightmare where I am back in school, in class, in uniform, as an adult surrounded by kids.
At University, doing something I liked, I suddenly became the best in my class, and one of the best in my course. This is not empty bragging, I was told that by professors. I graduated with a perfect score on my final project.
So yeah, "fake" high-school diplomas are bad, corruption is bad, but my personal experience does not allow me to really care all that much about these so-called "unapproved schools". My country's education system failed me, society failed me. And I bet my story resembles the story of some of those that were quoted in the article. Sometimes you just need a break.
Like lou in another comment, I also have a "fake" (ie, legitimate but rather meaningless) diploma through testing in California. As a child, I was passionate about knowledge and learning, but...
Like lou in another comment, I also have a "fake" (ie, legitimate but rather meaningless) diploma through testing in California. As a child, I was passionate about knowledge and learning, but found essentially all options intended for students my age to be horrible. Private schools around the area directly admitted they wouldn't be well suited for me. Public school gifted programs ended up being abusive, structured around teaching at largely the same pace, and giving us largely the same level of work, as other classes, but assigning it to us in quantities that were simply infeasible to complete, then telling us, and our parents, that if we struggled or found the work soul-crushing, it was because we simply weren't smart enough.
However, there was a test that gave a high-school-diploma equivalent, I think primarily intended for adults lacking a diploma to obtain one for situations where they were formally required; as such, I think the test was designed to be easy. By a loophole that existed at the time, a homeschooled student could take the test at any age if their parents said they were working "at a tenth grade level". So, against the advice of a number of people around me, I dropped out of school when I was 13, said I was homeschooled, and took the equivalency test.
I didn't study for the test at all, and the diploma proved almost nothing about my knowledge. While perfectly legitimate, it was, in some sense, 'fake' in its meaning. But having the diploma, at the time, meant that community colleges were required to allow me to register as a full-time student, regardless of age. UCs, in turn, would sign binding contracts for admission as a junior upon completion of sufficient community college requirements at a particular level. And so, around five years after having middle school teachers tell my mother I simply wasn't smart enough to succeed in their classes, I had a bachelor's degree from an R1 and was a graduate student at Caltech; I was also happy as a student, rather than being miserable. All I needed was to be allowed to try to be a university student, and the test and diploma allowed that. Years later, I'm still a scientist, and still happy, despite the insistence from those teachers that students who skipped high school would invariably burn out, be hopelessly socially awkward, and never amount to anything (one of my middle school teachers actually showed us documentaries and gave lectures trying to convince us of this).
So, perhaps the private, profit-seeking nature of the organizations involved here is a problem. I would also agree that some homeschooling is very unfortunate. I actually have a friend whose insistence on homeschooling her children herself, despite even realizing, I think, that she is clearly not someone who would be able to teach them effectively, and I do think they'll be quite disadvantaged in life as a result.
But I would also suggest that there is another side to "fake" high school diplomas. I'd argue that a high school diploma, on its own, says extremely little about a person's education, but at the same time, having one is also a formal bureaucratic requirement for many situations. Having a reasonable pathway for an unusual student to obtain one is valuable. And having options for children, and parents who understand them and care about them, to take, or at least try, different ways of learning is, I think, beneficial.
Thanks for sharing your very unique experience. Some young people are able to take advantage of the system to better themselves in ways others assume will just lead to failure. In regards to...
Thanks for sharing your very unique experience. Some young people are able to take advantage of the system to better themselves in ways others assume will just lead to failure.
In regards to homeschooling, I think this will be a much bigger issue in Arizona in the next handful of years. A law was passed that allows parents to effectively receive a voucher that takes funding for their child that would go to the public school system, and instead use it at a private school or for homeschooling. I strongly believe this will reduce the quality of education for everyone, and create a larger divide across income classes.
There's a straw man situation many people talk about, where either parents have more children to get more tax credits and other assistance, or even adopt or foster children for similar reasons, and don't take proper care of their kids. I'm sure it happens - bad people exist. But I don't think it happens at a scale that this law would now allow. Take the money for homeschooling, have a WFH job, and just let an iPad babysit your kids all day.
There's a saying in my country that roughly translates to "better to be a warning/tail light than to not shine at all". I think the US fits that description very well and in many aspects, much to...
There's a saying in my country that roughly translates to "better to be a warning/tail light than to not shine at all".
I think the US fits that description very well and in many aspects, much to the detriment of its population.
This isn't an issue with just this school or even just in Louisiana. John Oliver recently did a good episode on homeschooling in the US, particularly the state it's in today. He explores more of...
This isn't an issue with just this school or even just in Louisiana. John Oliver recently did a good episode on homeschooling in the US, particularly the state it's in today. He explores more of the unaccounted for children, types of curriculums often championed by such programs, and the politics of how we got here.
I'm a bit disappointed in the tone of the article. In my opinion, they are giving the institution too much leeway while also brushing over how endemic the problems associated with such institutes are. I know it's AP, but this isn't a topic you can fairly do the "both sides" thing with the current state of affairs.
I'm not even inherently against homeschooling, I do think there's something to be said about alternatives to public schools, but there have got to be some regulations. The skills you should develop in high school have value and the diploma should reflect that.
I think regulations on alternatives for childhood education can be difficult to get right. Even if they seem reasonable, if they are too inflexible or aren't written with enough consideration for...
I think regulations on alternatives for childhood education can be difficult to get right. Even if they seem reasonable, if they are too inflexible or aren't written with enough consideration for unusual circumstances, they could end up restricting homeschooling to be just a home-taught version of the same curriculum taught with similar pedagogical approaches. If there were regulations on the specific topics taught each year to a student, or standardized testing, I don't expect that the classes I took each year as an undergraduate would have satisfied the requirements for my age, and there is no reason why a college or university accredited as such would necessarily be accepted as an alternative by regulations. If there were regulations on the amount of time involved and how it was spent, as there seems to be an obsession, at least in the US, with long hours of direct instruction and structured learning for children, I expect my classes would have fallen quite short of satisfying them, and my few months as an actual homeschool student certainly would have: what I wanted, and what both provided, was to go to some lectures, have some conversations, and then be left alone so that I could actually read and figure out things.
I realize that my situation was unusual, but I often find that inflexible general regulations end up being quite damaging to people in unusual situations. And while it was filtered through success as an undergraduate, and admission to a good graduate program, of the several others I know who took a similar route, sometimes with years of actual homeschooling involved, and less, or no, exposure to ordinary schools, none of them, I think, ever regretted it.
I also realize that, in the US, this topic has taken on an unfortunate political aspect. That's depressing, if unsurprising given the seeming politicization of so many things in the US. It's also a risk for regulation if it isn't well thought out. You might place requirements on there being some organized curriculum in a way that takes significant administrative effort, for example. But extremist groups, especially religious ones, will enthusiastically put in that effort, while still indoctrinating, and parents looking for resources could be tricked into supporting that indoctrination. Even before the current rise of homeschooling and the religious obsession with pronouns, my mother pointed out that it was amazing how problematic a fundamentalist homeschool support organization could make a book on English grammar (there are so many spots for example sentences, after all, that are just ripe for use pushing your views on children).
But extremist right-wing political and religious aren't the only reasons why some children are homeschooled, and why some parents think that it will be better for the particular situation.
The skills you should develop in high school have value and the diploma should reflect that.
Does having a high school diploma, even from a public school, necessarily say much about a person's education? Are there skills developed exclusively by high school? Do they always have value? I've had many people tell me that there are, and that they do. But they can't point to what those skills are, and what skills I'm lacking by virtue of having neither gone to high school, nor to any home-schooled equivalent of it. The actual curricula, even in public schools, vary wildly in topics, level, and quality. They might help some students when they're undergraduates or at a community college, but they can't be relied on, and don't necessarily give something that a good student can't gain from later classes. At times they're actively detrimental: I recall my partner's frustration in trying to convince her undergraduate students that the five-paragraph essay form is dubious to begin with, but is wildly unsuitable for papers of more than a few pages, as she was inundated with absurd multi-page paragraphs and "In conclusion,". Besides this, the nominal intention of allowing test-based high school diplomas, which I think is a more reasonable way of approaching diploma-equivalents, is to demonstrate that the student has at least the minimum knowledge that would be expected of a high school student. It isn't actually very much, but that sort of diploma then does reflect what you suggest it should, at least for one aspect of high school.
Instead, people generally suggest to me that it is the high school experience that has value, or the social training, or the friends, or something ineffable. I've even had people suggest this who disliked the experience themselves. Yet still, they can't point to something I don't have. And while I don't think they are at all appropriate things to judge, I do fit many of the problematic criteria I think they want to suggest without explicitly saying so. I have friends, and have friends my own age. I've been in a stable relationship for a decade. I have a home, and a career. I can be polite and diplomatic at a party. I'm eccentric, yes, but so are many people, many of whom did go through high school. People largely do not realize that my education was so unusual unless the topic comes up, especially outside of academia. I am not some lone hermit obsessed with science and unable to interact with others as a result of my not having gone to high school. And if I were, would that be so bad that it should be prevented by regulation? If that was what I wanted to be, growing up, and if that was what made me happy?
Thank you for the well put reply and sharing your experience. I do largely agree with you about regulations on alternative childhood education, it certainly is difficult to get right. And there...
Thank you for the well put reply and sharing your experience.
I do largely agree with you about regulations on alternative childhood education, it certainly is difficult to get right. And there are also good, valid reasons for wanting to take alternatives. But it's been incredibly politicized, extremist groups have taken full control of the narrative and put us in absurd territory over here. We don't know where thousands of children have gone. Schools can be safe havens from abusive households, where teachers can catch on and get social services involved. I'm not necessarily advocating for strict regulations, but just a start, maybe regular check ins from social services ensuring the child is at least alive? As is, there's virtually no regulations in many states.
Does having a high school diploma, even from a public school, necessarily say much about a person's education? Are there skills developed exclusively by high school? Do they always have value? I've had many people tell me that there are, and that they do. But they can't point to what those skills are, and what skills I'm lacking by virtue of having neither gone to high school, nor to any home-schooled equivalent of it.
I had started typing a tirade following from the point you quoted, but figured somebody would bother me about it if they cared.
I do not think a high school diploma in the US says much about a person's education. Our education system has been obsessed with graduating students rather than teaching them, it's devalued the diploma to the point of proving you were babysat. Our education system as a whole has issues that need to be addressed in tandem.
I do not think the skills or education that should be developed in schools are exclusive to schools, or even necessary to live a "successful" life. I think whether or not they have value is up to the individual. The skills I began to develop in high school can most basically be summed up as: problem solving, critical reading, media literacy, and history. I personally find all of these valuable for a citizen to know, whether or not they apply it in their profession.
As far as the high school experience goes, there are less awful alternatives to socialization, but we have a larger societal issue of third spaces that would largely address these concerns if they were reclaimed.
I am not some lone hermit obsessed with science and unable to interact with others as a result of my not having gone to high school. And if I were, would that be so bad that it should be prevented by regulation? If that was what I wanted to be, growing up, and if that was what made me happy?
That's basically how I live even with having gone to high school! (An experience I'm bitter about and would like to see more flexibility for future generations.) I think you can guess my answer by now, but no, I don't think regulation should prevent that. So long as you were given proper opportunities to socialize, the opportunity to receive some form of education, and weren't otherwise in an abusive situation that is.
Some notoriously infamous Indian universities like Osmania and Kakatia used to do this back in the 1990s, companies were known to throw away your resume in the dustbin the moment they saw any of...
Some notoriously infamous Indian universities like Osmania and Kakatia used to do this back in the 1990s, companies were known to throw away your resume in the dustbin the moment they saw any of these mentioned on them.
Never thought United States will ever get inspired by this mind blowing education model!
I got something equivalent to a "GED" in my country. I just took a bunch of easy tests when I was 18. I was undiagnosed with ADHD and couldn't handle school anymore. It was like hitting a concrete wall with my bare hands. The accumulated trauma of failure after failure since a young age demolished me. I barely even had the motivation to take the GED "classes" and tests. My father had to drive me there and, I am not sure, but I think there was some corruption involved because he knew the director of the testing center. All I know is that I didn't study a single day and 2 weeks later I had my high-school diploma. It felt like a failure.
I have a recurring nightmare where I am back in school, in class, in uniform, as an adult surrounded by kids.
At University, doing something I liked, I suddenly became the best in my class, and one of the best in my course. This is not empty bragging, I was told that by professors. I graduated with a perfect score on my final project.
So yeah, "fake" high-school diplomas are bad, corruption is bad, but my personal experience does not allow me to really care all that much about these so-called "unapproved schools". My country's education system failed me, society failed me. And I bet my story resembles the story of some of those that were quoted in the article. Sometimes you just need a break.
Like lou in another comment, I also have a "fake" (ie, legitimate but rather meaningless) diploma through testing in California. As a child, I was passionate about knowledge and learning, but found essentially all options intended for students my age to be horrible. Private schools around the area directly admitted they wouldn't be well suited for me. Public school gifted programs ended up being abusive, structured around teaching at largely the same pace, and giving us largely the same level of work, as other classes, but assigning it to us in quantities that were simply infeasible to complete, then telling us, and our parents, that if we struggled or found the work soul-crushing, it was because we simply weren't smart enough.
However, there was a test that gave a high-school-diploma equivalent, I think primarily intended for adults lacking a diploma to obtain one for situations where they were formally required; as such, I think the test was designed to be easy. By a loophole that existed at the time, a homeschooled student could take the test at any age if their parents said they were working "at a tenth grade level". So, against the advice of a number of people around me, I dropped out of school when I was 13, said I was homeschooled, and took the equivalency test.
I didn't study for the test at all, and the diploma proved almost nothing about my knowledge. While perfectly legitimate, it was, in some sense, 'fake' in its meaning. But having the diploma, at the time, meant that community colleges were required to allow me to register as a full-time student, regardless of age. UCs, in turn, would sign binding contracts for admission as a junior upon completion of sufficient community college requirements at a particular level. And so, around five years after having middle school teachers tell my mother I simply wasn't smart enough to succeed in their classes, I had a bachelor's degree from an R1 and was a graduate student at Caltech; I was also happy as a student, rather than being miserable. All I needed was to be allowed to try to be a university student, and the test and diploma allowed that. Years later, I'm still a scientist, and still happy, despite the insistence from those teachers that students who skipped high school would invariably burn out, be hopelessly socially awkward, and never amount to anything (one of my middle school teachers actually showed us documentaries and gave lectures trying to convince us of this).
So, perhaps the private, profit-seeking nature of the organizations involved here is a problem. I would also agree that some homeschooling is very unfortunate. I actually have a friend whose insistence on homeschooling her children herself, despite even realizing, I think, that she is clearly not someone who would be able to teach them effectively, and I do think they'll be quite disadvantaged in life as a result.
But I would also suggest that there is another side to "fake" high school diplomas. I'd argue that a high school diploma, on its own, says extremely little about a person's education, but at the same time, having one is also a formal bureaucratic requirement for many situations. Having a reasonable pathway for an unusual student to obtain one is valuable. And having options for children, and parents who understand them and care about them, to take, or at least try, different ways of learning is, I think, beneficial.
Thanks for sharing your very unique experience. Some young people are able to take advantage of the system to better themselves in ways others assume will just lead to failure.
In regards to homeschooling, I think this will be a much bigger issue in Arizona in the next handful of years. A law was passed that allows parents to effectively receive a voucher that takes funding for their child that would go to the public school system, and instead use it at a private school or for homeschooling. I strongly believe this will reduce the quality of education for everyone, and create a larger divide across income classes.
There's a straw man situation many people talk about, where either parents have more children to get more tax credits and other assistance, or even adopt or foster children for similar reasons, and don't take proper care of their kids. I'm sure it happens - bad people exist. But I don't think it happens at a scale that this law would now allow. Take the money for homeschooling, have a WFH job, and just let an iPad babysit your kids all day.
There's a saying in my country that roughly translates to "better to be a warning/tail light than to not shine at all".
I think the US fits that description very well and in many aspects, much to the detriment of its population.
This isn't an issue with just this school or even just in Louisiana. John Oliver recently did a good episode on homeschooling in the US, particularly the state it's in today. He explores more of the unaccounted for children, types of curriculums often championed by such programs, and the politics of how we got here.
I'm a bit disappointed in the tone of the article. In my opinion, they are giving the institution too much leeway while also brushing over how endemic the problems associated with such institutes are. I know it's AP, but this isn't a topic you can fairly do the "both sides" thing with the current state of affairs.
I'm not even inherently against homeschooling, I do think there's something to be said about alternatives to public schools, but there have got to be some regulations. The skills you should develop in high school have value and the diploma should reflect that.
I think regulations on alternatives for childhood education can be difficult to get right. Even if they seem reasonable, if they are too inflexible or aren't written with enough consideration for unusual circumstances, they could end up restricting homeschooling to be just a home-taught version of the same curriculum taught with similar pedagogical approaches. If there were regulations on the specific topics taught each year to a student, or standardized testing, I don't expect that the classes I took each year as an undergraduate would have satisfied the requirements for my age, and there is no reason why a college or university accredited as such would necessarily be accepted as an alternative by regulations. If there were regulations on the amount of time involved and how it was spent, as there seems to be an obsession, at least in the US, with long hours of direct instruction and structured learning for children, I expect my classes would have fallen quite short of satisfying them, and my few months as an actual homeschool student certainly would have: what I wanted, and what both provided, was to go to some lectures, have some conversations, and then be left alone so that I could actually read and figure out things.
I realize that my situation was unusual, but I often find that inflexible general regulations end up being quite damaging to people in unusual situations. And while it was filtered through success as an undergraduate, and admission to a good graduate program, of the several others I know who took a similar route, sometimes with years of actual homeschooling involved, and less, or no, exposure to ordinary schools, none of them, I think, ever regretted it.
I also realize that, in the US, this topic has taken on an unfortunate political aspect. That's depressing, if unsurprising given the seeming politicization of so many things in the US. It's also a risk for regulation if it isn't well thought out. You might place requirements on there being some organized curriculum in a way that takes significant administrative effort, for example. But extremist groups, especially religious ones, will enthusiastically put in that effort, while still indoctrinating, and parents looking for resources could be tricked into supporting that indoctrination. Even before the current rise of homeschooling and the religious obsession with pronouns, my mother pointed out that it was amazing how problematic a fundamentalist homeschool support organization could make a book on English grammar (there are so many spots for example sentences, after all, that are just ripe for use pushing your views on children).
But extremist right-wing political and religious aren't the only reasons why some children are homeschooled, and why some parents think that it will be better for the particular situation.
Does having a high school diploma, even from a public school, necessarily say much about a person's education? Are there skills developed exclusively by high school? Do they always have value? I've had many people tell me that there are, and that they do. But they can't point to what those skills are, and what skills I'm lacking by virtue of having neither gone to high school, nor to any home-schooled equivalent of it. The actual curricula, even in public schools, vary wildly in topics, level, and quality. They might help some students when they're undergraduates or at a community college, but they can't be relied on, and don't necessarily give something that a good student can't gain from later classes. At times they're actively detrimental: I recall my partner's frustration in trying to convince her undergraduate students that the five-paragraph essay form is dubious to begin with, but is wildly unsuitable for papers of more than a few pages, as she was inundated with absurd multi-page paragraphs and "In conclusion,". Besides this, the nominal intention of allowing test-based high school diplomas, which I think is a more reasonable way of approaching diploma-equivalents, is to demonstrate that the student has at least the minimum knowledge that would be expected of a high school student. It isn't actually very much, but that sort of diploma then does reflect what you suggest it should, at least for one aspect of high school.
Instead, people generally suggest to me that it is the high school experience that has value, or the social training, or the friends, or something ineffable. I've even had people suggest this who disliked the experience themselves. Yet still, they can't point to something I don't have. And while I don't think they are at all appropriate things to judge, I do fit many of the problematic criteria I think they want to suggest without explicitly saying so. I have friends, and have friends my own age. I've been in a stable relationship for a decade. I have a home, and a career. I can be polite and diplomatic at a party. I'm eccentric, yes, but so are many people, many of whom did go through high school. People largely do not realize that my education was so unusual unless the topic comes up, especially outside of academia. I am not some lone hermit obsessed with science and unable to interact with others as a result of my not having gone to high school. And if I were, would that be so bad that it should be prevented by regulation? If that was what I wanted to be, growing up, and if that was what made me happy?
Thank you for the well put reply and sharing your experience.
I do largely agree with you about regulations on alternative childhood education, it certainly is difficult to get right. And there are also good, valid reasons for wanting to take alternatives. But it's been incredibly politicized, extremist groups have taken full control of the narrative and put us in absurd territory over here. We don't know where thousands of children have gone. Schools can be safe havens from abusive households, where teachers can catch on and get social services involved. I'm not necessarily advocating for strict regulations, but just a start, maybe regular check ins from social services ensuring the child is at least alive? As is, there's virtually no regulations in many states.
I had started typing a tirade following from the point you quoted, but figured somebody would bother me about it if they cared.
I do not think a high school diploma in the US says much about a person's education. Our education system has been obsessed with graduating students rather than teaching them, it's devalued the diploma to the point of proving you were babysat. Our education system as a whole has issues that need to be addressed in tandem.
I do not think the skills or education that should be developed in schools are exclusive to schools, or even necessary to live a "successful" life. I think whether or not they have value is up to the individual. The skills I began to develop in high school can most basically be summed up as: problem solving, critical reading, media literacy, and history. I personally find all of these valuable for a citizen to know, whether or not they apply it in their profession.
As far as the high school experience goes, there are less awful alternatives to socialization, but we have a larger societal issue of third spaces that would largely address these concerns if they were reclaimed.
That's basically how I live even with having gone to high school! (An experience I'm bitter about and would like to see more flexibility for future generations.) I think you can guess my answer by now, but no, I don't think regulation should prevent that. So long as you were given proper opportunities to socialize, the opportunity to receive some form of education, and weren't otherwise in an abusive situation that is.
Some notoriously infamous Indian universities like Osmania and Kakatia used to do this back in the 1990s, companies were known to throw away your resume in the dustbin the moment they saw any of these mentioned on them.
Never thought United States will ever get inspired by this mind blowing education model!
The article is about high-school diplomas.