As someone who once tried to teach introductory algebra to teenagers who had been largely "home schooled" and didn't understand fractions or negative numbers, I feel this so hard.
It was not all of my students, but a decent percentage of them. At least a third of them.
Even if you put it on the wall (a poster with numbers from, say, negative 10 to 10), they couldn't grasp it. The best way to get them to understand it was to explain it as being like debt, but that didn't make them suddenly able to use negative numbers in even simple equations. It just helped them to mentally understand the concept.
I felt so terrible for those poor kids. It wasn't their fault; it was their parents' faults. Homeschooling needs to be far better regulated in the US.
Oh god yes. I was homeschooled and it was horrible. I learned things but then they couldn't be bothered to help me get out of the house / go to a real school once I surpassed what they had to teach me, and I didn't know any nonfamily adults I could ask for help to leave.
I'm very sorry to hear you had to live with that. It's especially heartbreaking for the kids who want to learn. At least, though, that gives you a leg up as you search for knowledge on your own. So many kids just fall through the cracks and don't even know how undereducated they are, so how would they know to try to go out of their way to learn more?
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