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Comment by jenscow | Hacker News Reader

> time 'wasted'

From what I gather from my children (13 & 15, mainstream schooled), I find there to be a huge amount of wasted time. I'm sometimes under the impression that the teachers are basically glorified child minders.

I have a friend who home-schools their children, and they're much more aware of the world around them compared to others of that age.

My argument against home-schooling was that the children are missing out on the social aspects - but thinking about it, that's just wasted time which just encourages concern over trivial matters and like you say, cliques. There's also the concern of being around those with a less than desirable influence. Of course, it's not entirely negative.

Now I'm on the fence. In hindsight, I would have at least given home-schooling consideration.

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My mom was a high school art teacher (masters in art ed.) before she home-schooled me, and one of the reasons she'd often bring up was how she felt much of the time spent in traditional education consists of shuffling kids around from one room to the next, and she wanted something better for me.

As for socialization, that was more than likely the most commonly voiced concern I would encounter. I'd get a lot of "but don't you wish you were with other kids?", and I would think "who the heck wants to be stuck with a bunch of kids?"

We homeschooled our kids (for the most part). Whenever we worried about socialization, we grabbed our kids, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money.

Just kidding. But the point is, socialization in public school can be pretty awful, even violent. If your kid is the introvert, the less physically developed, and/or the less popular, socialization may not be a net win for your kid. And homeschoolers do get socialization - just not with kids. Instead, they're talking to grownups at the library or the grocery store while other kids are in class. They (often) come out more socialized to the adult world but less socialized to their peers.

Anyway: I'm not going to tell you that one way or the other is the right way. I'll just say that, as a parent, it's your responsibility. You can send them to public school, or private school, or a charter school. You can homeschool, which may or may not look like unschooling. Whatever you do, though, pay attention to how it's working out for your kid. If it's working out badly, do something else. (We switched to homeschooling from a very good private school when our daughter said that every day, when she was getting ready for school, her stomach hurt. That told us enough to know that, no matter how good a school it was, it wasn't good for her.)

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