And this is why we homeschool. Have a weird fascination with the human eye? Here's three medical textbooks, knock yourself out kid. Suck at math? No problem, we will take it as slow as we have to until you feel comfortable. There's no grades and pressure there's just things you've learned and things you're still learning.
I think probably a better solution is some sort of combination between home schooling and public school. Homeschooling alone makes it hard for children to learn peer social skills, and it makes it more difficult for them to relate later on to the majority of people who have had 13 years of primary/secondary education in a public school environment (in the US at least)
I don't understand this response. Whenever homeschooling comes up, someone always says that homeschoolers are unsocialized. I don't even know what that means. Do you think homeschoolers never have friends or enemies growing up? Where did this prevailing belief come from? I say this as someone who was homeschooled all the way through highschool and attended university and grad school. Even if homeschoolers are 'less socialized' than public/private schoolers, have you noticed that there are the oversocialized people as well? I'm talking about the ones who were popular in highschool, and end up deriving their self-worth from what everyone else thinks of them. Is that not also as big a problem?
I don't disagree that socialization is an important part of growing up, I just disagree with the notion that homeschoolers are savages that live in caves until they're 18.
I think the big difference is not that home schoolers do not have friends, it is that home schooling does not force you to deal with diverse groups of kids. In public school you have no choice of whether or not you have to interact with people that you don't want to/don't care to.
This is not really a bad thing, but learning to deal with people you would rather not can be a good skill to learn. This is not to say that you will not figure this out elsewhere.
Good cover, but one could argue that the pros of devoted tutorship and freestyle curriculum outweigh the cons of limited socialization. In my everyday life as an adult professional, I appreciate more the limited educational breadth I received in public school over whatever street smarts I gained from it. Need exposure to a lower socio-economic tiers? Get involved in volunteer charity organizations. Overall, I think educational breadth and depth will make one a far better citizen than simply being among other public school students at the hands of the awful US education system with NCLB.
It may not always teach you how to interact well with them, but it at can improve those interactions, and it at least provides exposure to those situations so you can be prepared for them later and relate to others who have been in similar situations.
All of the people criticizing homeschooling on the basis of socialization seem to advocate the "throw them in the water and let them learn how to swim" methodology.
I have to ask though what is the real advantage of this? With home schooling you can teach a child tools that help them navigate society. Give them some fundamental sociology, explain why certain kids their age act a certain way towards them. Let them read books that not only highlight such encounters but explain the multitude of outcomes possible.
With public school in many cases you sink or swim and the result could set you back decades (emotionally and otherwise). Home schooling promises a baseline of support. Maybe it wont breed the greatest multi-cultural prodigies or tortured artists but it will keep the most susceptible from disappearing into an educational gutter.
I say this as someone who attended a public high school with metal detectors and an enrollment of 3,000.
I agree with most of this, which is why I stated in other comments that probably the best solution is a mixture of home-schooling and traditional public schooling environments.
Public/private schools provide environments and situations that are important for social growth, and which are hard to achieve when homeschooling: unplanned and uncontrolled contact with peers, diverse student populations, etc.
I didn't say they are "unsocialized," I merely said it is more difficult for them to develop peer social skills. Let's not devolve the discussion to black & white thinking.
This is an important distinction. I was homeschooled until college yet still had plenty of friends (I'm not unsocialized). But I still experience culture-shock with my peers - and they with me - because my childhood and teenage years were alot different than theirs. It's not a dealbreaker for homeschooling - but parents should beware and plan appropriately. I agree that a homeschool/traditional schooling hybrid would be ideal.
It's a two-way street. Public school yields its own social issues as well: the separation-by-age dynamic, odd social bubbles, bullying, etc. I've had a professor remark that he easily recognizes homeschoolers - they're the students who know how to converse with adults!
Homeschooled here. Can confirm. The issue moving into adulthood is that now the adults are my peers and it's as hard to relate with them now as it was 15 years ago.
Indeed, which is why I said a combination is the best solution. The benefits of each can be emphasized, and the issues of each can be more effectively mitigated.
In the situations where it has been studied, home schooled children are actually better integrated socially than their non-home schooled peers (in the US at least).
Part of the reason this narrative persists (other than the teacher's unions pushing it :-)) is that people who haven't home schooled children or met them, sometimes believe it is a 1:1 activity, they visualize the public classroom but with 1 student and 1 teacher. The reality is that home schooling can be much more like going to university than it is going to public school. People who home school their children get together and plan enrichment activities (like going on geology field trips) or book clubs, or math competitions. Learning isn't the "bad" thing, "Oh, I have to go to school." it's a more life long thing, "Try to calculate how fast you'll go on your skateboard at the bottom of this hill given what we've learned about force and acceleration." Hard subjects are broken down into a pace that works well, easy subjects are zipped through without getting bored or waiting for others to "catch up." Interests are pursued.
It isn't for everyone, not everyone can afford to have one of the parents around to "own" the education responsibilities of the children, but it doesn't turn kids into anti-social monsters. Middle school does that :-)
FWIW, the reason I had the impression was that the several children I knew growing up who were homeschooled did have trouble socializing. Encountering the research you mention was surprising (at the time).
On reflection, I was looking at a very weak form of evidence - it might very well be the case (I have no idea if it is) that homeschooling has significantly better socialization outcomes than regular schooling and most homeschooled students you meet could still be socially awkward if the awkwardness (or some of the reasons for it) is the reason many of the students are homeschooled in the first place.
This is a great comment, but it just really begs for some citations. Where can I read up on long term results of home schooling (preferably not paywalled)?
The lack of a paywall is a challenge :-) and to be honest since I did my own research in 2000 my references are out of date, but just typing 'homeschool socialization' on scholar.google.com returns such gems as this:
"Compared to children attending conventional schools, however, research suggest that they have higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults. They are happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives. Their moral reasoning is at least as advanced as that of other children, and they may be more likely to act unselfishly. As adolescents, they have a strong sense of social responsibility and exhibit less emotional turmoil and problem behaviors than their peers." -- http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161956X.2013.796...
When I was doing my research (prior to homeschooling my three daughters) one of the things I did was sit in the Stanford Library and download various journal articles on the positives and negatives. If you do the same (and I'm a big fan of people being critical thinkers) you may come to the same conclusion.
Do you have any stats to back that up or is it just a feeling?
My own "feeling" is actually the opposite is true. My 6 home schooled friends are far and away the most socially adept people I know. Super friendly and able to talk to anyone. The 5 home schooled kids I know are similar. If they were at high school you'd expect them to be among the most popular people as they are so friendly and outgoing.
Simply "being social" is not what I'm referring to. Of course home-schooled children can still be social and have social skills. There is a specific subset of these skills which I am arguing that represent more of a challenge for them.
It is not impossible for them to still obtain these skills/exposure, simply more difficult. It also isn't life-ruining to be deficient in the specific skills I'm talking about. However, I personally think these specific skills are very important for the diverse, interconnected modern society we live in. It is an important concern to evaluate before advocating for 100% homeschooling, which is what started this whole debate.
Why don't you say what this precise subset of skills is, and present some evidence or even narrative about how public school assists students in developing them?
Actually you haven't. I have read all of your comments here and the only thing you mention is 'being exposed to a vast set of people with different experiences and biases'. You do not list social skills anywhere.
Even if it is true that public school provides this exposure - which is certainly questionable depending on the school - you have nowhere explained how this exposure at school helps people to develop positive social skills.
No, I literally meant homeschooling. Not all types of socializing are the same. The main thing home-schooled kids miss out on is being put in rooms with a diverse set of people, some of which are likely to be very different from them. The friction of dealing with people you disagree with, and the broader worldview gained from exposure to different ideas/cultures/attitudes are what I'm referring to.
Setting up playdates with the other home-schooled kids, or being on the church basketball team, etc... will involve selecting your peers, which is something we rarely get to do in "real" adult life.
Possibly, but is "socializing" children what school is for? Is a homogeneous society where everybody has a similar "socializing" experience really what we want?
I always thought it was for learning. I would rather my child have an excellent education and potentially have some adult social lessons to learn as an adult than to be well socially integrated and poorly educated.
I don't think a similar socializing experience = homogenization.
I have been encouraged by a lot of my teachers throughout my life to "dream" and be curious. I have attended 3 elementary schools, 1 middle school, 3 high schools, 3 public universities, and 1 community college. There was at least one teacher at every school who encouraged "dreaming" for me.
All this talk of socialization is not meant to suggest that it is the main purpose of school, merely that there are specific types of social interactions that children encounter a lot of in public school, while very little in a home-schooled environment.
But couldn't this same argument be applied to students at private, parochial, and specialized programs like Montessori schools? All of these are types of self selection.
Additionally your argument even per-supposes non-incidental socialization. For example, my brother home schools his kids but they are rarely ever "at home." For example last week looked something like this for them:
--Monday they attended a city library survey of Shakespearean tragedies. Then they attended the community chess club that evening.
--Tuesday the university museum of modern history has a weekly K-12 program open to both public and home schooled students. They go almost ever week.
--Wednesday was the robotics club at the community center. The home school association soccer program. And a STEM program (they are doing game development and working on their robot for the club competition) through a local STEM academy.
--Thursday is back to the university where a number of the individual colleges have courses for home school students on history, science, and math (my understanding is that these programs are open to anyone, but home schooled students make the largest block of attendees, followed by elderly retirees.)
--Fridays are at home for papers, research, and computer classes.
I guess I am saying that your perception of home schooling might not be a broad as it could be.
If your nearest private Catholic school is willing to provide you SES/Racial/Immigration status of their kids, I'd not be a bit surprised if it's more diverse on one or more of those grounds than the nearest public school, thanks to scholarships for low-income students, among other things. The public school will be 100% kids whose parents could afford to live in its district, unless there's busing going on, or some sort of magnet school thing. Property values will tend to follow school and district boundaries. The families in them usually have very similar income levels.
Public school peer groups absolutely are selected, primarily on an SES basis, which tends to skew race stats and percentages of low-generation immigrants, too. I don't get why anyone would think they're somehow not selected (I'm aware that you didn't advance that notion, brockers) or that deliberate selection would even typically result in less diversity, for any useful measure thereof.
This whole thread is built on a flimsy notion, best I can tell.
I agree that the same issue, to different extents, applies to all non-public schools. I don't think the issue arises from being "at home" necessarily, I think it stems from the natural bias introduced by choosing activities/settings/groups to socialize in.
Home school doesn't inherently reduce "exposure" in a general sense, as you have illustrated. But it makes it easier to stick to your (or your parent's) comfort zone. If a parent is committed to not shying away from uncomfortable social situations, and enthusiastic about engaging people with different views, they can probably provide this exposure to their child. I am just saying that is definitely a challenge that should be acknowledged and accounted for. Based on many people's descriptions of home-schooling, this is a concern that is often overlooked unintentionally.
Regular schooling isn't that diverse in most places. When I went to public school my entire class consisted of white lower-class children all within a year of the same age. That's not diversity.
I don't believe this is true. I attended a total of 7 different schools in 4 different cities in 2 different states during my primary/secondary education. Only one of these schools was notably non-diverse. I was very often exposed to children of other cultures/attitudes/backgrounds, as well as other ages. It is possible that my experience is exceptionally different, but it doesn't seem like it.
I tried to find some research on this, but unfortunately everything I find is an aggregate across all schools, rather than diversity within each school.
'Most' may have been an exaggeration, but even without, you still have social isolation in public schools, and no guarantee of it outside of them. The children in your neighborhood aren't going to be significantly different from the ones at your school.
The argument that the only way that children gain exposure to people with different backgrounds/ideas is to attend public school is dubious. Contrast that with public schools in the U.S. which are highly socially stratified. (Kids from wealthy neighborhoods attend schools that are populated with kids from the wealthy neighborhood... Not really the perfect ideal of "diverse".)
(edit: The argument that children educated outside of the traditional school system find it more difficult to acquire social skills is also dubious.)
However, one of the findings supports my case:
"Public charter schools are much more likely than regular public schools to be racially unbalanced. Whereas 30 percent of regular public school students attended a racially unbalanced school (one with less than 20 percent or more than 80 percent minority enrollment), more than 60 percent of charter school students attended a racially unbalanced school. This measure considers the racial makeup within a particular school, rather than comparing the school to the county as a whole."
Based on this, regular public schools are more likely to be diverse or "balanced" than not. This paragraph glosses over it, but it shows that 70% of regular public school students attend a school which has a balanced mix of students from different backgrounds. The segregated public schools are the exception, not the norm, but that segregation increases when parent choice is introduced (i.e. with charter schools where only 40% of students are attending a balanced/diverse school).
Your thesis was that home schooled pupils have a more difficult time aquiring social skills than their public school educated peers. How does this study (or this quote) support that claim?
It wasn't my claim that home-schooled students have difficulty acquiring social skills in general, it was that they miss out on a specific set of social skills, namely dealing with people who are different from them, whom they do not like, who have different opinions, etc... while maintaining productivity. Basically: learning to work together with a diverse set of peers and maybe to empathize with people who see the world differently, or to at least gain experience in coping with differences.
The study/quote supports this by giving a rough indication of how most public schools are diverse places. Obviously, this doesn't "prove" the entirety of my statements, it just offers a small amount of support in the area of public schools being either segregated or diverse.
Why is it hard to send a kid to a summer camp, or a community program? There are all kinds of groups children can attend.
I see zero evidence for the idea that it's 'very difficult' to expose home schooled kids to diversity. Indeed it's much easier to do so than with public schooled kids.
Those types of things will definitely help, but it is a constant concern which is why I considered it difficult. A summer camp or community program which attracts all kinds of kids would be ideal, but it is a relatively short period of time compared with the 9 months of daily melting pot sessions in a typical public school. Additionally, if "summer camp" means a highly specific camp (like art camp, or theater camp, or Southern Baptist Christian camp), the benefits will be lesser. So, the difficulty is not in finding some amount of diversity, it is matching the level many public schools offer.
While I'd err on the side of caution toward the benefits of homeschooling, I can also see how homeschooling might have some downsides. Perhaps a big difference for me is that my homeschooling was of the Third Culture Kid (TCK) variety, where quite likely the negatives of homeschooling were balanced out by (often) rather extreme interaction with wildly different people and cultures.
That said, you've been all over this thread arguing this point. And it seems reasonable in a common-sense sort of way. However, the counter-points also make sense to me (and are closer to my personal experience).
Could you point me to research, or better explain why you seem to feel so strongly about this point? It seems to be more than a hunch or a common-sense thing for you from the way you're arguing the point, and I'd really like to know what the basis is for that.
EDIT: Let me add that I have no strong opinion about this particular argument. I consider the damage done by public schooling to vastly outweigh the negatives, social or otherwise, so even if the negatives are significant, I'd probably homeschool my kids if I had to choose.
Home school co-ops are the answer, as are non-academically-oriented groups, such as churches, as well as sports and/or music. I was home schooled from 2nd grade through high school, and I was involved in all those things.
The old trope of all home schooled kids being antisocial shut-ins needs to die.
School is a huge part of most people's early lives, to think you can replicate all of the cultural and social experiences that take place there wholly in extra-curricular activities, i think, is misguided.
I like Salman Khan's approach, which put simply is this:
Learning takes place at home, students can go over material at their own pace.
'homework' is done at school, where children are able to ask questions about the material, helping and receiving help from other students and teachers.
This may be similar to a 'home school co-op' as you mentioned, but i dont know.
I have experience with co-ops in Texas (a homeschool-favored state) and Iowa (moderately difficult to homeschool legally). In both states, the co-ops are resources for the parents more than the children. Once-a-week classes are normal but function more as a social hour; the bulk of co-op funding (i.e. dues) goes to teaching parents how to teach their children.
That still causes issues. Co-ops are still extremely insular. It isn't an issue of being anti-social, it is an issue of being exposed to a vast and diverse set of different people with different biases, backgrounds, and abilities.
Home-schooled kids aren't permanently crippled and unable to succeed or something, but the range of people they are able to relate to and understand is diminished I think.
Non-academic groups are definitely good, but many of those often involve a great deal of like-mindedness (such as church groups, or groups sponsored by church groups). I don't expect you or other people who were home-schooled to be shut ins, but I do expect some extra difficulty in empathizing with those who are significantly different from you. (Not that it is impossible or something, just more difficult)
"It isn't an issue of being anti-social, it is an issue of being exposed to a vast and diverse set of different people with different biases, backgrounds, and abilities."
School is a homogenization factory, by design. I'd be more confident in homeschoolers meeting people with different "biases, backgrounds, and abilities" than in traditional school.
It's worth remembering that schools are an incredibly artificial construct that are barely a hundred years old, and school as we know it is younger than that. It's cognitively tempting, but wrong to treat schooling as the obviously-correct "default answer" against which everything else must strive to be measured... in reality, it's a fairly new idea with at best a mixed track record, and if viewed with historically-informed perspective, one with a lot of serious problems, not least of which is the observed fact of systematic squashing of intellectual curiousity.
And remember, when observed fact and theory clash, observed fact wins. It doesn't matter that theoretically school shouldn't do that. It does.
(In fact, to the list of school's crimes personally I'd add that it has created an entire society trained to trust academic theories over observed fact. But that's another discussion.)
Further, there are plenty of people who come out of school exceedingly poorly "socialized", which can also often be traced back to the artificial social conditions of school itself, combined with the cohort system's effect of requiring each new class of kindergarteners being required to construct a new social system from scratch, which is, of course, inevitably a very childish and immature one compared to one in which younger children are folded into a richer social structure formed by children of many ages. I reject the idea that schooling as we know it produces "perfectly socialized" children. It produces school-socialized children, which isn't the same thing. It's a great deal of the reason why we seem to be infantalized at an older and older age and this failed "socialization" is one of the major reasons I believe the current school system needs to be fully replaced... the "socialization" the current system produces is not a triumph but one of its major glaring flaws.
I have a feeling that the public schools in the 2nd century Roman Empire were significantly different from modern public schools, especially in the United States.
I expect they were more similar to US schools of 100 years ago than the US schools of today are (modulo being a lot more aristocratic in their student population).
All of these points go against both my personal experience and the results of research I've seen on these topics. I encourage you to find and post evidence for these claims.
A lot of people here talk about homeschooling/normal schooling as a binary choice with stark trade offs. But if anyone has read the recent Reinventing Organizations book then the example of Berlin school ESBZ[1] imediately comes to mind - self managed school where the kids decide their lessons, help each other and solve problems with help and advice from the parents, teachers and children from higher grades - they are still graded normally at the end of the year so they get the basic skills but they also get so so much more - problem solving, autonomy and authority, etc. I really don't get why we don't try to get all of our schools to work like that.
[1]http://developyourchild.co.uk/blog/teal-school/
Right, and if to achieve that style of learning I have to give up half our salaries to private school, I'd choose homeschooling to get the added benefit of lower stress (on wife and kids) and generally more convenience and life comfort.
I believe that when you homeschool your child, you are just blindee by your presumption. For one good student that comes out, you have one thousand religious zealot that believe earth is flat. It allows atrocities a la "dancing mom". It allows people to avoid vaccinations. Without mentioning the social awkwardness. I truly believe homeschooling is also a crime against humanity.
I have seen the religious zealots come out of homeschooling too. But do you have a source that has actual data showing that those are not a minority of the homeschool population?
I see no reason to believe they are the majority simply because they are visible.
I actually do. I won't be able to say much because I'd like this account to remain anonymous, but my parents are/were notable figures in the homeschooling movement. At least from the 90s-00s, religious homeschoolers were the solid majority of all homeschoolers in the US by far. Many of which are more extreme than you probably imagine.
hard to resist temptation to lower oneself to your level (and that's quite a road down there), but I'll try - you are wrong. as always, it depends on people involved.
The time commitment is pretty intense. I think that I'd love to homeschool my hypothetical child because I trust myself to do it right-- but I couldn't also provide for my family in the meantime.
But how much time in the American 8-hour school day is actually spent on education? A lower student-teacher ratio (i.e. 1:1) can drastically decrease time required for education. (I'm ignoring time required for other things like social activities, etc.) It's definitely a tradeoff!
The time commitment is actually way less than you would expect. The amount of "fluff" that goes on during the school day is obnoxious. You could probably spend less than 3 hours a day and get a better education.
You really should hear how presumptuous you sound. How are teaching your son to deal with people? How is he going to learn that he lives in a society? That sometime life is boring? that sometimes you are not the only one? 3 hours a day might be enough for the curricular material, but schools are much much more than that.
You accuse debacle of being presumptuous, but you are presuming debacle doesn't already teach his/her son how to deal with people, learn he lives in a society, that sometimes life is boring, and that sometimes you are not the only one.
By the way, school is not the only answer for any of the questions you asked.
How is someone going to learn that he lives in a society being locked in a building all day with people exactly the same age and social class as he is? How is someone going to learn how to deal with people when they're constantly supervised by a team of bureaucrats whose job is to deal with students' problems for them? [1]
I don't think anyone is claiming that the ideal homeschooling childhood consists of only interaction between parents and child, and nobody else. Neighbors, fellow homeschoolers, family, church, Scouts, camp, trips, actual adults: these are all sources of socialization.
[1]I went to public school and it was good. But I'm open-minded to alternative forms of learning.
We're going into our third year of homeschooling our two kids, and I can confirm this.
Consider that an average class consists of 25-30 students; this means that for every hour of class time, your child averages about 2.5-3 minutes of one-on-one instructor time if the teacher did nothing else but work directly with individuals. Obviously in practice this doesn't work out: there are announcements, lectures, assemblies, fire drills, time for individual reading, and of course some students will demand more of the teacher's time than others either due to behavior problems or simply because they vocalize their need for help better than other kids.
Compare this to homeschooling, where the student-to-teacher ratio is much lower, and the teacher is intimately familiar with the student's strengths and weaknesses.
Also consider the teacher's motivation: it isn't a general love for teaching coupled with sticks & carrots imposed by the school, district and state but rather a parental desire for their children to learn and succeed.
> There's no grades and pressure there's just things you've learned and things you're still learning.
I'm incredibly naive when it comes to homeschool, so I hope you don't mind me asking: if you don't grade what happens when you want to go to college? If you don't have any grades and didn't follow a curriculum how can an admissions team adequately assess whether you're a suitable candidate with the necessary credentials?
Almost all states have a required test to prove grade level equivalency for all students. As education is mandatory for "school age" children; these tests not only prove capability but that the parents are actually doing the legal duty to provide education.
College entrance is NOT an issue. After comparing SAT/ACT scores ever university I know prefers home schooled kids over most candidates, including all but the very best private school students. The academics I have talked to say that home schooled students are both more likely to graduate and do better academically than their non-home schooled counterparts (although I haven't seen any specific numbers to prove it.)
I have no experience with this but I assume they would just go off of everything except GPA. SAT / ACT / AP scores, extra curriculars, personal projects and achievements, and essays.
I just quite simply don't understand where people find the time to homeschool their children. I leave for work around 8am, come back after 6pm - by the time you cook dinner and eat it's usually 8pm. When and how would I do this? It would be financially unfeasible for either me or my partner to stay at home at the moment, we both need jobs.
Homeschooling in the simplest form requires a stay-at-home parent (traditionally the mother) to dedicate his/her time to teaching the kids. So, if you already have to send your kids to daycare, then you probably will find homeschooling difficult to accomplish.
For what its worth, Sudbury Schools [0] provide an interesting alternative to homeschooling. (TIL there is a Sudbury school in my area! [1])
Your comment points to the fact that, for at least some parents, schools amount to daycare with education tacked on.
It's hard to advocate homeschooling as it's not a reasonable option for most people, either due to parents working or lack of necessary knowledge (at least at the high school level). I certainly wouldn't be comfortable teaching e.g. Spanish, French, or biology.
so what happens if you suck at maths, and took an extraodinarily long time to get to the same stage as institutional schools would have? When would you know you are ready to leave homeschooling, and move to university?
I have what seems to be a unique perspective in this thread, among a bunch of trendy libertarians. I was actually homeschooled my entire life. It wasn't great. It did not do much to prepare me for the adult world, where people don't really care if your precious ass needs extra time on something or would rather do something else, and you do have to collaborate with people you may not particularly care for. I did not anticipate the need to navigate office politics. After a lifetime being spoiled, I'm floundering. Most of the jobs I've held haven't lasted beyond 6 months. If I do have children, I would respect them enough to put aside my ideology (after all, I hate the government as much as the next HN reader) to not do them that particular "favor".
