Ah okay makes sense, thanks for the clarification

Interesting

Lemmy will never betray you like this

Its possible that theres some of that. But it seems unlikely to me that thats the main thing going on. For two reasons.

One is that these mids tend to cluster in families. I can understand a family having one kid that doesn’t fit in, but for every kid in that family to not fit in? That seems a bit unusual.

The second reason is that people tend to start homeschooling young, like kindergarten (it is much more common for families to start it when the kid is very young then give it up as the kid gets older than the other way around). And I think at that age it would be really hard to tell if a kid fits in or not, so I don’t think that would be the primary reason why parents are deciding to not put their kids in school.

No worries

I don’t think homeschooling is good for a child’s development. All current or former homeschooled kids who I know reasonably well seem to have stunted social development and had trouble connecting with their peers. (And I know a lot of these people, relatively speaking.)

School isn’t just about learning your ABCs, it’s also about learning how to socialize with your peers through constant exposure and practice. You can try to put a homeschooled kid in sports or whatever, but they almost never spend the same amount of time with their peers as a normal kid would. And once that developmental window is over, it’s very hard to compensate for that loss. It’s like trying to learn Vietnamese as an adult. Sure you might be hold a conversation, but you’ll never get the subtly of the tones or accent entirely correct. The only path to true fluency is learning as a child.

I’ve also seen some homeschool kids struggle with holding down a job or going to university. Some parents might take issue with how schools operate, seeing them as overly disciplined and structured, because apparently that stamps the creativity out of a kid or something. And maybe there is some truth to these criticisms. But that’s not just a criticism of our school system, it’s a critique of society at large. If you’re going to have a super losy-goosey attitude towards deadlines and discipline when you homeschool your kid, then your kid is going to grow up never learning how to meet a deadline, never learning how to motivate themselves to do something when they don’t want to do it, and they will be unable to function in a workplace and a university. So some of these perceived downsides of schools (discipline, deadlines, test stress etc) are really just preparation for the world at large. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows out there. Your kid is going to have to learn how to handle these things eventually, and if they don’t learn young then the learning curve may be too steep for them to realistically handle.

That said, this issue about discipline doesn’t apply in every case of homeschooling. But the issue with socializing impacts 99.99% of homeschooled kids in my estimation, though. Even parents who think they are compensating for this with sports and things never are, in my experience (and Ive met a lot of these kids / families).

So please, for the love of god, DO NOT HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS.

I believe it’s some kind of digital spread-spectrum protocol that’s able to still function when noise is more than the signal.

Interesting, thanks for the info

Did a little searching and there are open standards that do similar things such as Wi-SUN (802.15.4g), and MIoTy (ETSI TS 103 357), and Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah) (though with much less range).

Would this still work with meshtastic?

may just have through-holes that require soldering

What does this mean in nontechnical speak?

you might mean “build a LoRa board from components” but a person who could do that probably wouldn’t be asking the question <- not trying to be a jerk, can’t think of another way to put it pre-coffee.

No worries, that seems a bit above my pay grade for now. Im just getting into this stuff

Awesome, thanks for the info. Do you by chance know where I can purchase this stuff in Canada? I’m not sure if the stuff on the link you sent will ship here

Thanks for the rundown

it uses LoRa which is proprietary

What is LoRa exactly? I thought it was just a range of radio frequencies

Yeah seriously that article paints a really dark picture

It’s also legitimately impossible to fully regulate this (besides shutting them down altogether, for which I’m totally on board)

This might just push it to the black market. It’s been pretty hard to shut down online gambling for reasons like this. Of course making illegal will dissuade some users but it won’t stamp it out entirely

18 seems like a crazy high age for this

Where I’m from we have a major river flowing through the heart of our city and we turn it into a frozen ice rink every Winter. Works great until the windchill hits the minus forties or fifties, then it’s time to stay inside with a nice cup of hot tea

How cold does it get there?

How’s life in New Zealand?

What can I, as a regular guy, do to help make this happen?

Okay so I guess we’re actually in agreement then

Other countries have done it. The size argument is bullshit, China is able to do it and has equivalent landmass. No excuses. The entire point of trains was to traverse these vast expanses. Trains are what drove the Westward expansion of American society. So arguing that trains can’t handle those distances is absurd.

China has good rail service, but China still uses cars / transport trucks to get to many rural places. Source: I’ve been to rural China. I’m not against trains I just don’t think we can make it the primary means of transportation between rural towns