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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

This is from Victoria, Australia in case there is confusion.

And as a background. The majority of K-12 schools are free, public schools with a smaller but growing group of religious schools. Home schooling is perfectly legal but requires you to register with the government.

Personally I think those who advocate for home schooling often think schooling is purely for education. When for children it is also the time in which they develop socially. Taking them away from that without a suitable alternative is in my opinion somewhat reckless. But provided there is some alternative I don't see why it wouldn't be an option.

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Interacting with other adults is so different from the social interactions you deal with in school that I'm not sure whether school is a net benefit or detriment to developing social skills.

When I think back, I don't think school really prepares you socially for anything other than life in an institution. If you plan on doing prison time that might be useful. But after high school I've never been in any kind of situation remotely like that (other than maybe my first retail job).

"When for children it is also the time in which they develop socially."

I've seen this argument many times, but it has never seemed persuasive.

Where else in life are you ever going to encounter an environment where all the other people are within 12 months of your age, except for the authority figure up front? Other than maybe military bootcamp, never. Even prison has a range of ages and backgrounds represented.

The social skills learned in such an artificial environment are highly unlikely to transfer to the real world.

>The social skills learned in such an artificial environment are highly unlikely to transfer to the real world.

That's an odd argument, do you think there is little socializing benefit from any kind of schooling then?

A 12 month range of age is not unusual for a circle of peers/friends throughout life, especially if you normalise for age.

A narrow age band means that children are likely to be at similar stages of emotional & mental development as their classmates, so they can learn from each other. It's important not to forget that children are children and not adults. School shouldn't necessarily directly model the rest of their lives.

Your last point in particular doesn't pass a reality check. We learn best from people who have already been through what we're going through, not from others who are just a clueless as we are.

I'd argue that the "socialization" provided by public school is a negative rather than a positive. In other words, if I'd send my kid to public school it would be _despite_ the kind of socialization you'll find there (violence, bullying, gangs, drug dealing) not because of it.

I think many homeschoolers know that students "develop socially" in the public schools, but have observed also that the social structures and behaviors seen there (gangs, bullies, cliques, general teenage crappiness) are utterly dysfunctional and quite unlike the social behaviors that would be acceptable in the adult world.

There's a case to be made for homeschooling as a better way to "socialize" kids than public schooling.

There is nothing preventing kids from developing socially if they are home schooled. They just need to get out of their house and socialise with other kids, which they will do on their own if people let them...

The socialising you get from the school is a bit artificial these days anyway. For example, the class leader is often who get the top marks in the exams. Good luck with that when you get out of school...

I found socializing in institutional school settings is mostly with other students of the same age, with less consideration for tact.

My socialization as a (partly) home-schooled student involved interaction with a much wider band of ages, adults included. In my opinion, transferring to a private Catholic school stunted my social development more than anything - and brought out a crass personality streak that remains to this day.

This is a sample size of one, of course.

> There is nothing preventing kids from developing socially if they are home schooled. They just need to get out of their house and socialise with other kids, which they will do on their own if people let them...

You can't really make global assumptions like that. I know for a fact I would have preferred to play games and code in high school rather than go out to socialize, and hanging out with friends I made at school was the majority of my socialization until I was forced to keep in touch with them in college.

Not every kid is a social butterfly waiting to be let free.

The socialization from school is 100% not artificial. I can look back at many stupid things I did in middle and high school that taught me valuable life lessions and have concretely shaped how I think about things.

>Not every kid is a social butterfly waiting to be let free.

Not every kid, but most kids are. May not be a "social butterfly", but most of them like to go out and play with other kids..

While there might be some sad subset of home educators that lock kids in a box and disallow social interaction, that isn't the norm. There are vibrant communities that exist around the world. Local education services, museums, community education coops, teams, social groups, friends...

It's not some sort of vacuum where kids spend 9 hours a day practicing for the spelling bee and sewing bonnets.

op here.. all too true!

To mitigate that, at least in Melbournes East there is a growing group of homeschoolers who get together for events - organised on facebook sites such as HEN aka http://home-ed.vic.edu.au [membership] and "Melbourne Homeschool Families With Teens" etc.

I was homeschooled, and I personally did a lot of organized sports with other homeschoolers. Not team sports per say, but rather, something kinda similar to gym classes/track-and-field. The biggest events held among homeschoolers in that area probably had around 200+ kids attending, with a mix of religious and non-religious families and a wide variety of ages.

edit: FWIW this was in Toronto, Canada.

"When for children it is also the time in which they develop socially."

You mean by being bullied so much that "pulling a columbine" looks like a good idea?

Then having almost 30 years old and no friends because for most of your life you only hated everyone and only learned how to hate and distrust?

Yeah, that "developed" really well.

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