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Comment by seneca | Hacker News Reader

> ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it?

It very much is. No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public. "The real world" is highly filtered social circles and freedom of association. The idea that it's somehow an automatic good to force healthy kids to mix with everyone who happens to show up, regardless of whether they have severe behavioral or social issues, is pretty questionable.

> My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there.

You can expose your kids to different cultures without leaving them wide open to everything else. It's not a binary. The point is that home schooling lets you pick and choose.

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> It very much is. No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public.

I'm baffled by this. Many workplaces? Mass transit? Walking down the sidewalk? At a concert? Buying groceries? True, there don't all expose you to the full sweep of human existence at once but, in aggregate, it seems pretty similar to what you'd encounter at most public schools. What if they want a career in a hospital, or law enforcement, or social services, ... the list goes on.

You might hope that your child will live a privileged existence unbothered by the rabble, but it seems to me they need to be prepared for a future where they encounter all kinds of people. I'm sure this can be compatible with homeschooling but I can't see how it's not generally a disadvantage. (Though perhaps onerous clearly outweighed by other advantages, depending on the situation.)

The closest social equivalency to public school socialization I can think of is prison. You're stuck there for N hours per day with limited or zero control over what other people you're around. Maybe parts of military training might also be similar.

That's the kind of thing that is very much not like the "real world." It's more than just being "exposed" to less optimal peers (like you would on a bus), it's an entirely different social experience.

Home schooled kids walk down sidewalks, go to concerts, go grocery shopping.

Most workplaces are highly filtered. The whole interview process is specifically geared towards filtering out undesirable people.

> Most workplaces are highly filtered. The whole interview process is specifically geared towards filtering out undesirable people.

This just isn't true or is born from a standpoint of extreme luck. Like have you genuinely paid attention to the people you work with? Coworkers, CEOs, the stuff people say in slack channels or the things people gossip about at work? The only way I think someone can genuinely hold an opinion like this is by being so unaware of what workplace politics that they are unaware that most workplaces are like Highschool 2. Even the professional ones. Especially the professional ones.

It's absolutely undeniable that interviewing is meant to filter out undesirable behavior. What in the world do you think it is? So many people cannot just walk in and start working next to you, very few will be selected.

You are pointing out behavior that is different, but not undesirable. Which is not being discussed. i.e., kids who distrust other kids learning is undesirable. As would people who create hostile work environments, or are inefficient, or unreliable, or don't have the right connections.

In my place of work people nearly universally went to top end universities, a much larger proportion than the normal population have phds. you think that's random? And more locally if you work on a sales team you are going to be hired to work directly with people that have certain shared traits that make them effective sellers. It's so obvious that interviewing is an active filter I'm not even sure what to do to convince someone that thinks otherwise.

I'm not sure how you equate any of that to workplace politics or gossip. Even if it was relevant, the fact that it is not a perfectly effective filter doesn't make it not a filter.

You don’t have to sit side-by-side rubbing shoulders and squabbling with rabble for 12 years in order to understand and deal with it, just like you don’t have to wrestle with gators for 12 years to learn respect for nature.

> You might hope that your child will live a privileged existence unbothered by the rabble

I think it's telling that the other responses seem to focus on exactly this; the idea that their child will exist in a class apart from the rabble, and will not have to interact with them.

It seems to speak to two very different views of community. On the one hand, there is community as a collection of all the people in a space: people who share local resources, frequent the same local businesses, and have the same local concerns. On the other, there is a community of choice: people who share the same social class, and possibly the same religion or cultural beliefs. I think it's fair to say that you can have both, but trying to say that you can belong solely to the communities you choose and treat everyone else as beneath notice sounds quite problematic, and it will absolutely not give children a correct or complete view of the world.

Isn't this exactly what society is built on though? Mutually beneficial interactions borne of choice, not compulsion? And isn't it the sane, rational thing to do to oppose people who compel you to join their community?

> No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public

I think "forced" is doing a lot of work there. No, you're not forced to work alongside someone problematic. But quitting your job is quite an escalation to deal with the issue. Same with a troublesome neighbor. To say nothing of public transit, taking flights, interacting with other drivers on the road...

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