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Comment by hgomersall | Hacker News Reader

This so much. I've met quite a few homeschooled children and almost without fail they lack some pretty fundamental social skills. Things like an apparent inability to interact with children of their own age, or behaving obnoxiously to others in ways that would be rapidly stamped out by peers.

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I have the opposite experience. I've met a ton of homeschooled kids (also, I seem to attract them in the dating scene) and by and large I've found they have very sophisticated and healthy social skills, and it's "normally schooled" kids that have very twisted and often destructive social skills, probably derived from mostly interacting in the artificial social environment of "everyone is +/- 1 year from your age". Admittedly it's likely that I am suffering from selection bias based on my own social circles.

(I was traditionally schooled)

I went to a college that actively recruited homeschool students. Lots of experience with homeschoolers who just left home.

I haven’t seen the things you’re describing.

One of the most common things I saw in homeschoolers was a strong “intellectual hobby.”

They had curriculum bashed around them, so if there was a topic they liked, they could study it after year in increasing depth.

Of course, this is homeschoolers who go to college. Not necessarily representative.

How do you know that the parents didn't pull the kids out of school because lack of social skills and unusual but unctronable behavior resulted in peer bullying.

I work in educating young men and women, ages 16 up to around 60. Homeschooled kids almost never make a year in "normal" education. They fail to adjust to a small college, they are no longer the center of attention. They have to wait for others to catch up. They are not team players. It's really hard to watch.

It would be interesting to see actual statistics on this, because that doesn't match my experience at all. I was homeschooled, and went to a D1 state university, as did my siblings and numerous friends who were homeschooled. Both myself and one sibling finished with a 4.0 in dual majors. That same sibling went on to a masters program. I went on to an engineering Phd. The transition from grad school to corporate life was a bigger adjustment than high school at home to university. It just wasn't a big deal despite all the FUD.

I was also homeschooled and adjusted easily to a small college and a Masters at a top 20 university, and agree that the transition from university to corporate life was much more jarring than from homeschool to “normal” school. I only spent one day at a traditional school and honestly it was horrifying, spending 6 hours in a drab room listening to someone talk for 55 minutes, then running to the next one. The socialization issue is a concern, but there are plenty of ways to get kids involved socially while homeschooling. And normal schools also produce plenty of socially maladjusted people, not to mention bullying.

Yeah, I dunno, anecdotally all the homeschooled kids I knew were fine socially.

The world needs lots of corporate cogs who fall in line with the team. Personally I wasn't home-schooled but I can see the upside of being raised in an environment where you're not taught to be subservient to the authority of a school system, nor forced into a system where you're taught physical self defense is to be punished.

Sounds like the home-schooled may have a leg up for some tasks that require ignoring the training to fall in line with the team or authority. Their niche in life may simply be different.

Most of the "homeschool" kids I've met were definitely taught to fall in line, just with their family leaders and not with their peers. Subservience to religious or parental authority is a big reason why kids end up in those kinds of situations.

The rest sounds bad but "they have to wait for others to catch up" sounds like a win for homeschooling.

It's unsurprising that a teacher-student ratio around 1:1 could yield incredible academic results. If that so often comes at the cost of skills necessary to operate in the vast majority of real world environments though, it's kind of useless.

Schools are extremely artificial environments compared to pretty much everything else that comes later in life.

I don't disagree that schools are completely artificial environments. However what matters is that they're able to teach skills that are necessary in most real-world environments.

Have you ever heard of the fable about the tortoise and the hare? Sometimes speed isn't the most important.

Except when they try and get a job, be part of a social group or are in any sort of leadership position.

Everything in life is better when you’re a team player.

Which is why I said the rest sounds bad. But being a step ahead of your peers is something else that makes life better.

Try that with a romantic partner. Not attractive.

In a leadership role, being exasperated by half the team? Not motivating.

Also, the premise is that you are ahead of the bunch. It's also feasible that you are below the local average, and have no experience dealing with that situation. Takes guts to persist in that situation, but that's where you learn a lot.

This is personal opinion and not backed by any study or research. In all the ones I have seen, they easily adapt and actually get involved in civil societies more

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