One of the most frequent responses we get when people find out we are homeschooling our children is something along the lines of, "But what about socialization?" This is usually accompanied by a concerned frown, as if the speaker actually has our kids' best interests in mind and is concerned we are steering them wrong. They often look as if they are really saying, "You poor darlings!" What a load of malarkey!
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First, most 'socialization' in both public and private industrial-model schools is actually 'anti-socialization', being taught the worst sort of wrong socialization practices (like interaction within a large, homogenous peer group with minimal supervision or accountability, accommodation to mediocrity, acceptance of relativist liberal dogma as fact, racism, etc...). There is always the exception to this rule - the public-schooled kid who excels and becomes an outstanding scholar and a fine adult, but such cases are so rare and noticable that the exception just proves the rule.
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Second, it's easy to get positive socialization as a homeschooler. Our social activities include:
- Church
- All of our kids are participating as a group in judo, swimming, and baseball
- Each of our kids is participating individually in either golf, tennis, or gymnastics.
- All of these activities involve different types of social interactions in different contexts and different groups.
- There is also an excellent homescholer's organization in this area. The group facilitates specialized classes (chess, Spanish, etc...) as well as field-trips and play days.
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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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5 comments:
AAAAAAAARGH!
Don't get me goin' on this one!
More later.
Great post! "acceptance of mediocrity"...I love it.
I completely agree--when someone says our homeschooled kids aren't "socialized," make them define the word "socialized." What do they mean? The ability to "play well with others," or the ability to subsume your own beliefs in the name of being a part of the "community?" These are completely different things....
Russ
pondrings.org
The claims you made against actual schooling are false. If intolerance is taught anywhere, it is taught at home, where the child is surrounded by individuals of the same race, religion, and political beliefs. Furthermore, you so callously disregard the problem of socialization, requiring a definition of the term. It is very simple. Children can not learn to interact with all personalities, positive and negative, if they are never required to. Throwing a naive 18-year-old into a college with a variety of individuals, expecting them to somehow instantly learn the qualities of teamwork, competition, and compromise, is nothing more than a recipe for disaster. Not to mention homeschooled children have the highest levels of depression, standardized for age and socioeconomic status. For some children in certain areas, home schooling is great. Introverted children, children with mental disorders, families planning on living in an area for only a short while--home schooling would work and perhaps be the most beneficial choice. However, exceping for that small segment, home schooling is in no way better than attending normal school, and in fact generally results in exponentially worse childhood and educational experiences.
Katherine,
You're right - homeschooling is not for everyone, but you're pretty much dead wrong on the rest of it.
As I mentioned in the post, homeschooling is not equivalent to isolation. It is easy for homeschoolers to get positive interaction with kids of all races and cultures - interaction that teaches teamwork, competition, and compromise. Interaction that avoids the group-mind and mediocrity that is 'socialized' into most industrial-model school kids.
And where'd you get your depression statistics? Just this week I heard on TV (sorry I can't cite my source - can't remember) that public schooled kids have a 20% depression rate (that is one out of every five kids) and that as many as 15% of public schooled kids will attempt suicide. ( I wish I could find that stat again because it is so awful as to be incredible!) You'd be hard pressed to find anywhere near 15-20% of homeschooled kids that were any sort of mal-adjusted, much less depressed or suicidal.
But I can see some of what you are talking about. I have seen numerous kids that were so mal-adjusted that they were kicked out of all the public and private and alternative schools, thus making them defacto homeschoolers. I would not be surprised to see high depression and suicidal ideation in that group.
Homeschooling is also not a small segment. It is a large and growing segment. Large enough to put enough of a crimp in the public school attendance that schools have started begging homeschooled kids to come and take even just one supplementary course at the public school to boost their numbers.
A large enough segment, that prestigeous, mainstream colleges are recruiting heavily among homeschoolers (who perform about 20% better on standardized tests than age-matched public schoolers.)
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