Exploring Alternative Education Types: The Good, The Bad, and The... Whaaaa?

This video explores various perspectives on education, focusing on homeschooling versus traditional schooling. The speaker highlights misconceptions about social skills in homeschooled children, stating they often excel compared to traditionally schooled peers. The conversation also delves into different educational methods categorized by location, medium, and curriculum, discussing the potential benefits and drawbacks of each. It touches on the importance of adapting educational systems to the modern era, including utilizing AI and online resources. Through humorous anecdotes and personal experiences, the conversation critically examines traditional education models and their applicability today.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] like they've done big meta studies on this persistently.

Homeschooled kids are better socialized, they're better leaders, they're like, better in pretty much every category. And people are like,

Yeah, but I remember I've engaged with homeschool kids and they have no social skills and I'm like, okay

try to bring them back to your memory Do you remember why you thought they had no social skills? Was it that they were unusually well mannered? Was it that they didn't engage in petty social politicking? Was it that they didn't randomly get mad at people who picked on them? Is it that Maybe they were socialized by adults instead of children

Speaker: hey kid, get out of that hamster ball. Oh, I promised my father I wouldn't. Oh boy

Speaker 2: You best do what he says, homeschool kid. Well, this is our part of the playground, see, , we're going to duct tape you to the bench.

Speaker 3: You mean you would actually duct tape my entire body to a bench?

For what purpose?

Okay, okay, , okay,

Speaker 2: okay, okay,

Speaker: okay, okay. Have a nice second half of the day, Nerdo.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you shouldn't be

Speaker: such a smart mouthed Mr. Know it all. [00:01:00] Oh dear.

Speaker 4: Enjoy your lunch, nerdo! Ah! Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me! Oh, dude, you don't say that!

Malcolm Collins: About the only homeschool kids. I've seen that have persistent problems are the ones from very religious backgrounds where it included denying them access. To either common media . Or denying them the right to date and stuff

Speaker 15: mother knows best, it's a scary world out there. Something will go wrong, I swear. Ruffians, thugs, also large buds, men with pointy teeth,

Malcolm Collins: and then they become like sex freaks.

Speaker 11: In canon, I don't care. I ship it. I don't care. I know that they are siblings, but I think there's something more. If she were dating that guy, they'd be banging, I am sure.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: HEllo,

Malcolm Collins: I'm excited to [00:02:00] be here with you today. Today. We are going to have an interesting conversation. It is going to be about.

Education because I was having a conversation recently where I realized how. Incorrectly, a lot of Americans think about education because they confuse the actual choices they have around educating their children. And I would say that all of the choices that we make around educating our children should be categorized into three buckets.

And you should not confuse these buckets are almost totally interchangeable with each other. And Simone is going to hate the names of one of these buckets and we'll let her choose a um, , , the first bucket is location. The second bucket is Medium, but Simone also likes to call it method, so method, I'll say.

And the third button, it, bucket is curriculum. So, let me explain how people make mistakes around [00:03:00] these three buckets. So, I may make a complaint, and I may say something that's apparent like, Isn't it wild that we just sit our kids in a room with what is to them an arbitrary authority figure telling them what's true and what's false?

And that they are just expected to memorize these things and then, you know, write them down at the end of like, like, Oh yeah, I just trust the authority figure. That's a good way to relate to information. And then some parents will be like, and they'll see our, you know, online, what is a form of platform.

And they'll be like, well, that's too tech for me. So like, well, I like your high tech stuff. I, I take my kids to a woods school, right? They do outdoor schooling, a woods school. And I'm like, well, that, I mean, they could take a tablet to the woods. You know, like, wait, who's, who's teaching them in the woods?

And they're like, well, it's a, you know, it's basically a normal school in the woods. It's like an

Simone Collins: arbitrary authority figure telling them what's right [00:04:00] and wrong. Yeah. But now they're in the woods. So.

Speaker 18: Yep, that's what I thought. See that? You've got a drum circle in your backyard. Oh, well, they showed up a few days ago, but I didn't think they were hurting anything.

Yeah, you know, I had a guy in Jackson County, he had a little drum circle in his backyard, turned into a drum circle four miles in diameter. You get a few hippies playing drums, and the next thing you know you got yourself a colony. Oh, dear.

Malcolm Collins: So it's good to understand that changing the location where the education is happening doesn't change either the method or the curriculum.

And when you are thinking about. Things like the method slash the medium, as I call it, of education. It is very, very important that you not get confused by the aesthetics of the geography. So an example here is let's go back to granola mom, right? So we just had the previous [00:05:00] conversation. They're called

Simone Collins: crunchy moms,

Malcolm Collins: crunchy moms, whatever.

She goes, Oh no, it's okay. You see, that's not the method that we're using. My child, like the teacher, acts more like his friend and I hear this and I go. That sounds infinitely worse than the previous thing you just told me. It does. You, you are telling me, first, that's a much better way, if the child, if the teacher has like creepy ideas that they want to incept your child with or world perspectives, it's going to be much easier if they've taken on this interpersonal relation with the child.

Simone Collins: This is a cult leader now. Oh, good. So we've gone from. Arbitrary authoritarian leader. He might hate and whose ideas you might question to a cult leader, whose ideas you will certainly not question because they love bond. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And, and we're, and worse, and I've seen teachers like this when the kids don't love them.

They're not that happy with the kid. It's very cult leader vibes. But then the question is, is like, also like, what are you filtering for? Like, what kind of person is like, I want to be [00:06:00] friends with a bunch of. Like middle schoolers or toddlers. But I want that. Like some, some heavy filters have been applied by the time you've gotten to that point.

And then if they're in the woods with your kid, this is the sub faction that said, I want to not be near other adults. And for whatever reason, I couldn't get a job in the local public school. Are you really sure that this is what you want? I would remind you that in the United States. One in 10 kids. I think it's over one in 10 kids has experienced S.

A. By a teacher. So, you know,

Simone Collins: and these