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Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

My issue with saying socializing is one of the primary goals is that schools leave kids to figure it out on their own. Hard to know how schools are performing at that goal when it is going unmeasured.

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Schools do better than home schooling. Those kids constantly do great on tests but it doesn't take long to figure out they are lacking socially.

I don't know how to teach socialization other than kids figure it out, but I'm open to the idea.

Some of those kids are lacking socially. It's not 100% by any means. The thing is that if you are home schooling your kids, you have to be intentional about socializing them in a way that you simply don't have to if you have them in a formal school setting. Obviously, some parents are going to fail at that but not all will.

Well the thing is if youre home schooling it's really easy to just never have your kid interact with someone they dont get along with. Thats the most important part of the socialization though. If you dont put effort into making your kids life a little uncomfortable Im not sure how theyll gain those skills.

As an adult, you can mostly choose to simply not interact with whomever you don't get along with, and this is exactly the right thing to do in that situation. Especially if the "not getting along" part involves severe abuse, as it often enough does among unsupervised kids. Why shouldn't kids get the same choice?

> you can mostly choose to simply not interact with whomever you don't get along with

Have you never had a job?

More importantly someone you get along with even though they are a [Democrat, Catholic, or a long list of other groups that people have strong beliefs in]

Not 100% is claimed often, but I have personally never seen an exception.

Maybe some exist but I don't know of any

Do you make a point of interrogating all the “normal” people you know about their pre‐adult educational history?

You’d be surprised how many people you’ve met who were homeschooled but never happened to bring it up in casual conversation.

Homeschooled kids can socialize outside of homeschool and be perfectly well-adjusted. There's something to be said for avoiding the hierarchical social structure present in schools.

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