Although homeschooling may help with academics, what about socializing? Traditional schools are by far the better option for making friends as a kid
That said, I'm really not seeing this effect with my kids in the SF Bay Area. They have few opportunities to socialize on school grounds, and are then whisked away by parents and taken to after-school classes or back home to sit in front of a computer. "Socialization" boils down to kids hanging around on social networks on their phones. And even these seem to be shifting from chat to passive consumption (TikTok, etc).
of the same age.
> Classrooms empty into lunchrooms and schoolyards, which are not segregated by year.
In my experience, in elementary school our class had assigned tables for lunch and a specific time when we had the playground and blacktop. YMMV. But at any rate a half hour in the cafeteria and a half hour in the yard aren't the best places a child could learn to interact with other children; the characteristics of these activities are constrained by the form of the institution.
I can’t imagine assigned seating working very well, except for at a very small school in a small district. Yours might not be a representative case.