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Comment by bonecrusher2102 | Hacker News Reader

I think I'd have the same question.

I have a friend who coached a club sport for high school students. They said that they saw, over their tenure, over 100 homeschooled kids come through their teams, and they can remember only a single one without significant social challenges.

There are probably a few jobs out there that do not require the ability to interact successfully with bosses and peers, but I'd imagine they are few and far between. Looking at "success" in a given job holistically, I would be inclined to argue that "soft" or social skills make up a nontrivial portion of the requisite skillset.

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I guess that depends on what you mean by 'social challenges'. What are the expectations?

We participate in a homeschool community which gives weekly (if not more often) opportunities for both structured and unstructured (i.e. play) social interactions. Balance this with home-interactions between their siblings, kids in the neighborhood, and folks at our church, they interact with a pretty big array of people, and we end up getting to work with them on issues a lot more diligently and quickly.

Our group has a wide range of social skillset folks. From kids who are very hard-to-manage to visible gifted and talented people.

IMO, the "problem" only exists if you, as a parent, don't get involved in the raising of your children.

I think in terms of time, weekly is a lot different than 8 hrs a day 5 times a week (plus more on the weekends or after school).

In this comparison weekly is just the weekend piece. The cumulative time difference is dramatic.

The cumulative effect of wasting (more or less) 8 hours a day 5 times a week is also dramatic. You can work to improve the social life of a homeschooled child, improving the education of a publicly schooled child is a much bigger challenge if for no other reason than the amount of time they're "stuck" receiving a rote and mediocre (at best) education.

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