Ask HN: Parents, what are you doing for school this fall?
We ended up doing full-on homeschooling. Our local policies have them physically going in in about 3 weeks, or being &quot;virtual&quot;.<p>We have a legally deaf-blind student that we feel will not be able to cope with everyone wearing a mask and having to be distant. (Under normal circumstances, he tends to get rather close in because he&#x27;s trying to see you; he&#x27;s got rather more European personal space sensibilities than American ones.) We also have a sneaking suspicion that &quot;in person school&quot; will last less than a week before someone coughs and everyone is sent home. (So to speak.) We think this is going to be a very unstable and destabilizing option.<p>The local virtual option was well established here before, but involves children sitting in front of computers for nearly the full 8 hours, as if they were at school. As adults, we&#x27;re hardly willing to be on 8 hours of video call a day and asking for this from children is absurd. (I&#x27;m not too worried about the details of whether it&#x27;s exactly 8 hours, the point is, they&#x27;re clearly trying to function as a school <i>day</i> replacement rather than a <i>school</i> replacement; the two are not the same.)<p>I&#x27;ve also noticed my oldest is falling behind in math, because they&#x27;re going just a <i>touch</i> faster than he can quite keep up with [1], and I&#x27;ve kind of wanted to fix that anyhow. I can see the memeplex forming where he realizes that there&#x27;s no reason to put any effort in, because almost no matter what he does, the curriculum goes zooming on and gives him an OK grade. Even if we only do this for half a year or a year I&#x27;m hoping to have a chance to break in to this cycle.<p>At the moment I&#x27;m not focusing too hard on the &quot;socialization&quot; problem. Lockdown is precluding a lot of good solutions to that anyhow. We can address it more thoroughly later.<p>The main thing I&#x27;m having to reconsider is music. I still want to offer a music program, but now band isn&#x27;t an option and&#x2F;or is not a reliable option. (This is true even if we took the full-physical option anyhow.) We&#x27;re doing a trial run of the home schooling this week (before our actual start date, so we can decide how we like it), and I&#x27;m considering trying to offer the kids some music programs involving instruments that are capable of functioning alone. I took enough piano that I could easily teach it; I&#x27;m also considering electric guitar as a versatile option that seems to have some passable electronic teaching options. (I feel like even on an instrument I don&#x27;t play myself I can still fill in the gaps in such programs.)<p>[1]: A previous comment of mine on the topic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23490872" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23490872</a>