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Comment by torial | Hacker News Reader

100% agree with this.

Also, with the right community, it is possible to have plenty of "socialization" with other kids. My family participates in a parent-led co-op that allows kids to benefit from different strengths in different parents and to have lots of friends.

As my kids are neurodivergent, I think this environment has been safer for them and allows them to focus on their passions. There is still some peer pressure re: neurodivergence, but I think it was less severe than when I was in public school with less obvious neurodivergence.

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>it is possible to have plenty of "socialization" with other kids.

I agree. Public school is not a great place for socialization, and it's not hard to create something better. Nothing socializes kids like sitting next to each other motionless in silence for several hours lol

The advantage of public school isn't that the socialization is super high quality, but that it's going to be broader spectrum than pretty much any alternative.

It's not about getting your kids to form the best relationships possible, it's about teaching them to be comfortable with and learn to handle a huge swathe of people that are different from themselves.

And, possibly more importantly than that, it's about teaching kids to do this without the immediate presence of their parents.

Are public schools a perfectly diverse cross section of the population? Of course not. Are they a whole lot closer than very nearly any private school or home school? Absolutely.

In my experience, socialization at school is "broader" in that you meet kids from a wider range of the population, but that breadth is destroyed by the fact that they are all exactly the same age as you are.

Homeschooling brings you into contact with a self-selected subset of the population, but across much wider range of ages.

This often turns out to be more broadly valuable.

I split the difference with a Montessori School. Broad range of ages in each class. The whole school interacts during the 2 hour collective lunch and recess time. It's been a good experience for my kid and the school continues in a somewhat similar way after elementary. It's more of home school cooperative than public school in style and I'm okay with that for now. I'd like my daughter to move at her own speed and get more help or more advanced work if she needs it. I just can't be the one to do it. I have no patience

I went to a violent high school. There were shootings and stabbings. Socialization is overrated.

sir this is a thread about privilege

that possibility isn’t even in the range here

the choices are good school district, decent private school, or a home school concept

Oh, so because not everyone can do it, nobody should be allowed to? We should all strive for the lowest common denominator? That makes strong communities?

I am completely content with inequality

He was joking

The best part about socialization in public schools it you will meet someone who isn't like you. I know plenty of home schooled kids who got plenty of socialization - but it was all people of the same group as their parents. Same religion, same politics...

Do you really think kids in school sit silently and motionless in class for several hours? I’d invite you to sample any classroom to test that hypothesis. There are many reasons to suppose schools aren’t the best for socialization, but that’s not it.

I'm not sure it's about socializing with other kids. There's also something about being able to function in a hierarchical organization (e.g. the workplace) that may not be developed in a home school environment.

I got really into fencing as a kid, which for whatever reason attracted a lot of private school and homeschooled kids, so I got to interact with the whole spectrum. I'm in an affluent, highly secular area, so this was basically the best case scenario for those homeschooled, and they were still definitely weird.

No amount of artificially constructed socialization immersion is going to beat the organic development of spending several hours, every day, surrounded by a ton of other kids.

What you end up with is a kid who has marginal experience with conflict resolution, communication skills, and any degree of independence. Which in turn, makes them perceived as weird, meaning that when they do have social interactions with others, they get marginalized, and further deprived of social development.

Public schools definitely have a misalignment of interests problem, but private schools solve that problem without stunting your child's charisma.

> I got really into fencing as a kid, which for whatever reason attracted a lot of private school and homeschooled kids

Selecting relatively obscure sports that nonetheless have a decent representation on college sports rosters is a college admissions and scholarship “hacking” thing. Fencing used to be a great choice for that, dunno if it still is.

It is very possible (if not usual) to have better socialisation home educated.

IMO meeting lots of different people, of a mix of ages, in multiple different places is better socialisation than going to the same place with the same people every day.

I have had many years of compliments from people about how good my children's social skills are.

What the heck is neurodivergence?

It's almost anything out of the ordinary by definition, but usually refers to children somewhere on the Autism spectrum. They often struggle with being bullied in public school and depending on where they are on the spectrum can cause considerably increased workload for the school or even have outright behavioral problems complete with physical violence. That's extreme and rare thankfully, but even kids with relatively mild conditions can struggle in a chaotic public school environment.

Tiny suggestion: s/children/people. It's true that it's usually used to refer to children, but that's just because autism is most identifiable in early childhood. Autism (or Asperger's syndrome) is not something you can 'grow out of' or 'cure', because it's a difference in basic cognitive functions.

Yes, but the context here is school students.

Neurologically divergent individuals who do not adhere well to traditional expectations of behavior in social settings.

Given that this is a technical term that has gained colloquial usage, not everyone who is identified as (or self identifies as) neurodivergent is actually neurologically divergent in a literal sense, but behaviorally is close enough to be a moot point in non-academic settings.

This link has some good details on it - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodi...

It is a term describing people with mental differences: ASD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourettes to name a few.

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