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Comment by jhawk28 | Hacker News Reader

This is the most common myths about homeschooling. In reality, the kids at public school sit at a desk most of the time. They don't get to socialize. Most activities are structured. Homeschoolers have CO-OPs, field trips, weekly PE visits, real interactions with adults, and actual free time. They are the most socialized kids in the US. The diversity in the homeschool relationships is quite large which you can see when a homeschooler has discussions with adults while their public school peers just quietly talk amongst themselves.

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Growing up, homeschool kids were absolutely weird as hell. Sure, some turn out fine, but it's very hard to do right, and requires parents putting their kids outside of everyone's comfort zone, which is... uncomfortable, so it rarely happens.

The homeschooled neighbor kid from a super religious family absolutely went off the deep end at 18. Many such cases.

This ability to so confidently assert things from your own dreamland with no regard to the real world is amazing. Were you also homeschooled?

You're straw-manning the worst public school experience against the best possible homeschool experience.

> They are the most socialized kids in the US.

Bullshit. You know how I know? Because on average parents are terrible at exposing their kids to Things Not Like Them and Things They Don't Approve Of.

There are great homeschooling parents and crazy ones, but maybe it's not the worst idea to give kids a few hours a day outside their family-approved bubble?

Just in case it's the latter.

Or am I mistaken and all homeschooling in the US requires the child's consent?

> Bullshit. You know how I know?

People should be able to bypass public schools if they want.

I don’t disagree with your final statement, but they’re also not wrong. Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange, intelligent in some ways, and completely inept in most ways that mattered. People who desire to completely shield their children are just as detrimental to their children’s development as those who over-expose. However, in my purely anecdotal experience, the ones who were over-exposed were better off than the former. And the middle road led to better outcomes overall.

>Growing up it was well-known that homeschool kids were strange,

Growing up, it was well-known that in highschool that there was always a small subset of students who were strange. It was so cliche that more than a few sitcoms were founded on that very premise. You could walk up to any stranger age 40 or older, say "you know those weird kids in high school" and they could almost certainly rattle off the list of names even today.

This is because in any large group of kids, some significant percentage of them will be weirdos. Thinking that this is somehow a result of homeschooling is more than simply fallacious, it reveals a prejudice of yours.

Where were you and others encountering these homeschooled kids if they were locked up in their cosseted homes in which they were apparently never socialized?

As another reply pointed out, maybe these kids are “weird” in some way, maybe they are not. We don’t have more than anecdotes here. More importantly, and to the point of my first reply, we don’t know the motives of their parents. The GP was engaged in mind reading. Certainly, the motives are manifold. One motive may be, “I’m going to home school my kid because he’s weird and won’t do well in a public school.” We don’t know which way the causal arrow points.