> It seems like utter madness to want to have your kids "socialized" in an environment like that.
That's what society is. What's the point of socializing kids into anything other than the actual society?
That's what society is. What's the point of socializing kids into anything other than the actual society?
I'm ambivalent on homeschooling and it largely depends on motivation. I can absolutely buy homeschooling as an alternative to a poor public school district with no opportunity for quality education. I don't buy homeschooling as a way for parents to hide their children from "the real world" or other more ideological reasons, which from what I see sometimes does happen. This is a bad strategy; after all, in so many career paths who you know is just as important or even more import as what you know.
My guess is that homeschooling will produce both some of the best students and some of the worst, depending on the parent.
School, to me, is like jail: It's the only place where I can meet such unregulated behaviors.
Second, yes, it's true that there are gangs, crime, bullying, popularity-obsessed people, etc., in the real world. But the difference is this: outside public school, those are bad behaviors, which lead to unsuccessful outcomes. If you want to teach children to succeed in society, you need to teach the opposite of what public school "socialization" teaches.
The point is to subtract from all of that rather than add to it.
Of course, in my public school we had dudes who were fully-pubed driving their cars to the 6th grade, so kind of an extreme example.