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Comment by waiquoo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. It is technically possible to recreate this exposure outside of school, but very difficult.

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.

Public school doesn't teach people to interact well with people you don't want to.

Indeed forcing people to do what they don't want to do is precisely the problem with school - whether socially or academically.

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.

I'm curious how you interpreted this culture shock.

Was it that you regretted not having similar experiences?

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