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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

  > Homeschooling alone makes it hard for children 
  > to learn peer social skills...

I think you meant to say "Keeping your child at home alone..."

"Homeschooling" does not exclude socialization with other children.

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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.

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.)

Where did you find data about the social stratification of public schools? I just attempted to find this information and found nothing...

Also, I don't think public school is the only way to get this exposure, but creating it elsewhere seems to be very difficult.

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.

What are these 'melting pot sessions' you are talking about, and how do they teach social skills, empathy, and conflict resolution?

  > Where did you find data about the social 
  > stratification of public schools?

Here's one: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/01/18/economic-disparity...

This was a good find, thanks.

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.

  > The study/quote supports this by giving a rough indication 
  > of how most public schools are diverse places...

No. They study reports that schools are increasingly segregating along socio-economic lines, despite efforts to desegregate public schools by race.

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.

Possibly, but is "socializing" children what school is for? Is a homogeneous society where everybody has a similar "socializing" experience really what we want?

http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pd...

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.

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.

  > Based on many people's descriptions of home-schooling,
  > this is a concern that is often overlooked 
  > unintentionally.

Where did you find people's descriptions of home-schooling that describe this?

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.

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