This is less of an issue if children are raised in the nuclear families like in the olden days, but these days what other avenues are left where children can learn something in a group and form long term friendships other than a school?
My homeschool upbringing included team sports, solo sports clubs, debate leagues, sleepovers, group field trips, scouting, community college, and various co-op models over the years.
Here's the difference--you're more likely to have mixed-age groups (particularly for elementary) and, critically, you're going to have much heavier adult involvement and guidance.
This gives a huge benefit: The social culture isn't defined by the kids. You have highly engaged adults acting as role models and vetted by the community. There's no critical mass of same-age peers defining the culture despite the best efforts of a handful of overworked administrators.
Additionally, there's usually a large amount of community collaboration and resource sharing. A key co-op for me in later years was essentially a group of local professionals who each taught their respective fields (writing, design, forensics, mathematics, etc.). Some were other parents with kids in the program, others were local experts. You still have a peer group spread between the classes--I had perhaps 20 in my immediate circle of a similar age, and a few hundred I met statewide during competitions--but by high school, the education essentially becomes student-led private tutoring with parental guidance, with a small-group shell and social extra-curriculars.
Absolutely. This is completely dysfunctional and unnatural and I don’t know how anyone thought it was a good idea.
EDIT: You can also check your local library, as the librarians are likely to know of at least one person who homeschools and might be able to connect you.
I suggest starting with your state resources (assuming you are in the USA). Here are a couple for Oregon: - http://www.ohen.org/ - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschooling-in-oregon/
At the time that I was homeschooling my children, that was enough info to lead me to various parent and meet-up groups.
Something that isn't mentioned much - just like getting a tutor in college, its pretty easy for a parent group to pitch in for an occasional day of tutoring or lecture/review from an expert.
Negative concerns about socialization was never an issue in my experience or from what I saw with other homeschoolers, rather the opposite.
When getting started, make an honest appraisal of your teaching capabilities and home life. Be ready to admit where you have areas of weakness and stop when you reach the end of your capability and don't have support or a parent group to assist in those areas. Be ready to experiment with different learning approaches and look at it as an opportunity for yourself as much as for your child.
Like anything else in life, you and your child will get out of the experience what is put into it. Success takes effort. I think (just my opinion) too many parents let public school do the parenting. When I first started with my 3 year old (who was already reading and doing math by that age) I created a simple set of goals and a project plan and then reiterated through it as I learned more about homeschooling. By the time my second child started to read and write I had a solid sense of direction and a plan that I was able to loosely follow for the next dozen years.
One last tip: don't stick to the public school schedule. Life lasts all day long, all year long. Activities may change with the seasons, but learning doesn't need to stop just becuase summer came. Be flexible. Take lots of field trips. Have fun... OK, that was more than one last tip.
Compared to that I'd absolutely say homeschooling (even with occasional events and activities) is quite isolating.
With homeschooling, the parent sees what's happening and can protect their child. Nobody will protect them at school - especially if the school lies to the parents to save face/protect teachers. And nobody will ever pay for the destroyed family relationships this produces.
How is a kid supposed to learn to deal with the uncomfortable situations when everything they do is shut down and punished by a teacher but they don't care about the actual problem and it's perpetrators? How is a 7 year old kid supposed to stand up to the teachers?
In school you spent 6 hours each day on recess/lunch break? Because I'd argue that in most classes, you aren't exactly supposed to be socializing, but rather, you know, following the class you're in
Socialising doesn't just mean unrelated chatter.
When I sat next to other kids there weren't discussions, there was fighting and stealing my stuff and teachers not reacting because they sat me next to the precious ones who couldn't do anything wrong so "they keep an eye on me" - and then punishing me for my missing stuff. When we had to do projects I was the only one working and the other kids ignoring me on purpose - but somehow that was my fault too and I got a bad grade because "it was supposed to be a team project".
Fuck schools. It's not my fault I was born with ADHD - and if you force me into the school then it's on you to learn to deal with it. But that's not going to happen - and thus homeschooling is the way for my children.
It’s the reason we spend a lot of money to send our kids to private school. I don’t actually think curriculum, etc., makes a tangible difference. But our school puts K-12 all on one campus with small grade level sizes and lots of opportunities for older kids to teach younger kids. (E.g. summer camp activities for elementary school students where most of the counselors are high school students.)
We still pulled them out and are now homeschooling them, largely because of the "socialization" at the traditional school. My oldest in particular was retreating behind a social facade, and his innate interest in just about everything was dwindling, choked off by the social pressures of both his classmates and the sick game of "achievement" that schools present.
I'm not going to say that everything is perfect or even that everything is better. We're a family of introverts, and we all struggle with socialization, but for him the social situations that we seek out are doing far more for him than the forced interactions of traditional school.
And you really have a huge amount of control and opportunities for socialization when you're homeschooling. There are get-togethers with other homeschoolers. There are in-person classes. There are things that would traditionally be called "extracurricular" but we see as core parts of what a childhood should involve. Some people form microschools, or have parents teach rotating topics. The online stuff isn't disconnected from other humans, and as the author of this piece says, it's not the "let's transplant our usual methods on top of Zoom!" bullshit that so many people have suffered with.
There certainly are tradeoffs and tension. If you want self-paced, it's hard to stick with a known cohort of other kids. It requires quite a bit of privilege to have the time and opportunity to shepherd this stuff through. I am greatly indebted to my wife for setting things up and managing them. There's no way it would happen if we were both still working full-time. And it won't work as well for some people—it's not the same for every kid or every family.
That's kind of the whole point.
Things like a chess club, book club, lego robotics team, renting out a gym, doing science experiments, playing dungeons and dragons, and so on. This was slightly before the era of kids having cell phones, but we made use of landlines to keep in touch as well.
That said, it obviously depends a huge amount on the parents, and requires a huge amount of time and effort on their part. While I think it was a mostly positive experience for me, there are very few people I could recommend do it with their kids. The strong impression I got was also that it became less effective as you became high school aged, but I went back to a regular school before that.
In particular, I retained a childhood friend who was a street playmate. The rest of my friends last through middle and high school until they moved away, and in some case drifted apart.