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I made an account just to comment on homeschooling since I grew up homeschooled in the US and have a lot of opinions about it. It's great if you have intellige

I made an account just to comment on homeschooling since I grew up homeschooled in the US and have a lot of opinions about it. It's great if you have intelligent parents who know when to say "I don't know," but if you aren't an expert on a given subject, you should bring in a private tutor. This means that for most parents, once your kid hits highschool you can't teach them anything outside of whatever you have a bachelor's in, so to homeschool effectively you'd have to just pay for a bunch of private tutors for each subject and then you're not really homeschooling anymore. Also, depriving your kid of the socialization they'd get from more traditional non-cult schools in the US is almost universally seen as bordering on child abuse by people who grew up homeschooled, so keep that in mind moving forward. Learning how to be likeable is already difficult enough for kids who have social opportunities all day every day. The stigma absolutely did not come out of nowhere. It's unfortunately common for homeschoolers to leave the house and present as if they have autism or some other social learning disability. For some reason it isn't taught as a learnable skill, but I think nearly everyone would agree that it takes practice. There will be obvious differences between a kid that practices 2 hours per day instead of 30 minutes a week. Edit: I'd also caution anyone against giving too much credence to the stories of parents who homeschooled their children but were never homeschooled themselves. Parents and children often end up having wildly different perspectives on this subject.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> This means that for most parents, once your kid hits highschool you can't teach them anything outside of whatever you have a bachelor's in, A bigger issue is that teaching (and teaching kids even moreso than adults) is itself a skill, and a skill lots of people with degrees don't have even in their degree field. The most successful homeschool parents I've known haven't used private tutors or been omnicompetent, but have been professional educators. Who, for those who weren't professional educators of children to start with, spent a lot of effort learning about child development abd childhood education to be successful at homeschooling.
em-bee 5y ago
if you haven't actually gone to school then how can you judge the benefits of the socialization it provides? some of us prefer to socialize outside of school with kids that actually share our interests rather than being forced to interact with kids that we have nothing in common with. school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed. i count myself lucky that i only experienced mild bullying and being an outsider completely eliminated any issues of peer pressure for me as i simply had no need or desire to fit in. there are plenty of other alternatives where you can socialize. be it boy/girl scouts, music classes, some sports or other activities. of course, if you didn't get to participate in those either, then you really did miss out. i am sorry for that. your parents failed you at that point. however, if you think that school would have helped you, i would not be so sure about that.
- socialist_coder 5y ago
  > school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed. So does real life. People need experience dealing with these situations. IMO, it would be better to deal with them at school where you have parents & teachers to fall back on, rather than than waiting until you are an adult without nearly as much support.
  - TheGigaChad 5y ago
    Idiot.
  - lewiscollard 5y ago
    > So does real life. As an adult, you usually have the option of walking away. > People need experience dealing with these situations. I think kids need to be taught the kind of self-respect such that they know when it is appropriate to deploy a healthy "go fuck yourself". Not clear that state schooling does a great job of this - indeed, if it's teaching them anything, it seems to be you are going to get bullied and you have no choice butto put up with it.
  - 5y ago
BeetleB 5y ago
> Learning how to be likeable is already difficult enough for kids who have social opportunities all day every day. As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with this. The kid who went to school and didn't learn this is not at all an outlier. There are quite a few in every class. What would be interesting is if there is research to indicate which suffers more: The kid who doesn't learn this and has to go through school, or the homeschooled kid who doesn't learn this and doesn't have to deal with it in school. Agreed on the tutor thing at high school, although for many homeschooled kids I know, it was usually one of: 1. Send kids to a regular high school (i.e. don't home school those years) 2. Lots of schools in this area have programs that allow homeschooled kids to attend classes in the areas their parents cannot teach. Of course, rules on this vary from state to state.
- MCllorf 5y ago
  >As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with [learning how to be likeable] The rebuttal to your point is so simple and obvious it's really hard to take you seriously. Socializing is a skill that can be practiced. If you have fewer opportunities to practice, you're less likely to get better. The children that are bad at socializing despite going to public school do not show that public school doesn't teach socializing, it means they didn't learn as much from their practice. For all you know, poorly-socialized public school children would have otherwise ended up living in their parents' basements until 45 or turned into serial killers if they were homeschooled. Public schooling doesn't need to guarantee good outcomes to be the more desirable choice.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    The hard lesson I learned is that success in socializing as an adult is quite different from success in socializing in school. I don't make close friends with adults the way I did as a school kid. I had to unlearn a lot of my school life to succeed. The school environment is a very artificial one, and not very comparable with much in the adult world. Those who stick to the rules learned there tend not to do well (also found out the hard way). For years I've tossed the idea in my head to write a blog post of all the life lessons one learns in school that lead to poor performance at work. Likewise, I'd like to write another post on all the lessons from school that often do translate to the work environment (because it was so ingrained in us), but which leads to suboptimal working conditions. I can't obviously discount your experience, and my school experience was actually quite good - but just as you are aware of the downsides of home schooling, I'm aware of the downsides of schools. If we go beyond anecdotes and to research, I believe most research is in favor of home schooling - both academically and socially.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> This means that for most parents, once your kid hits highschool you can't teach them anything outside of whatever you have a bachelor's in, A bigger issue is that teaching (and teaching kids even moreso than adults) is itself a skill, and a skill lots of people with degrees don't have even in their degree field. The most successful homeschool parents I've known haven't used private tutors or been omnicompetent, but have been professional educators. Who, for those who weren't professional educators of children to start with, spent a lot of effort learning about child development abd childhood education to be successful at homeschooling.

em-bee 5y ago

if you haven't actually gone to school then how can you judge the benefits of the socialization it provides? some of us prefer to socialize outside of school with kids that actually share our interests rather than being forced to interact with kids that we have nothing in common with. school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed. i count myself lucky that i only experienced mild bullying and being an outsider completely eliminated any issues of peer pressure for me as i simply had no need or desire to fit in. there are plenty of other alternatives where you can socialize. be it boy/girl scouts, music classes, some sports or other activities. of course, if you didn't get to participate in those either, then you really did miss out. i am sorry for that. your parents failed you at that point. however, if you think that school would have helped you, i would not be so sure about that.

socialist_coder 5y ago
> school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed. So does real life. People need experience dealing with these situations. IMO, it would be better to deal with them at school where you have parents & teachers to fall back on, rather than than waiting until you are an adult without nearly as much support.
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
  Idiot.
- lewiscollard 5y ago
  > So does real life. As an adult, you usually have the option of walking away. > People need experience dealing with these situations. I think kids need to be taught the kind of self-respect such that they know when it is appropriate to deploy a healthy "go fuck yourself". Not clear that state schooling does a great job of this - indeed, if it's teaching them anything, it seems to be you are going to get bullied and you have no choice butto put up with it.
- 5y ago

BeetleB 5y ago

> Learning how to be likeable is already difficult enough for kids who have social opportunities all day every day. As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with this. The kid who went to school and didn't learn this is not at all an outlier. There are quite a few in every class. What would be interesting is if there is research to indicate which suffers more: The kid who doesn't learn this and has to go through school, or the homeschooled kid who doesn't learn this and doesn't have to deal with it in school. Agreed on the tutor thing at high school, although for many homeschooled kids I know, it was usually one of: 1. Send kids to a regular high school (i.e. don't home school those years) 2. Lots of schools in this area have programs that allow homeschooled kids to attend classes in the areas their parents cannot teach. Of course, rules on this vary from state to state.

MCllorf 5y ago
>As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with [learning how to be likeable] The rebuttal to your point is so simple and obvious it's really hard to take you seriously. Socializing is a skill that can be practiced. If you have fewer opportunities to practice, you're less likely to get better. The children that are bad at socializing despite going to public school do not show that public school doesn't teach socializing, it means they didn't learn as much from their practice. For all you know, poorly-socialized public school children would have otherwise ended up living in their parents' basements until 45 or turned into serial killers if they were homeschooled. Public schooling doesn't need to guarantee good outcomes to be the more desirable choice.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  The hard lesson I learned is that success in socializing as an adult is quite different from success in socializing in school. I don't make close friends with adults the way I did as a school kid. I had to unlearn a lot of my school life to succeed. The school environment is a very artificial one, and not very comparable with much in the adult world. Those who stick to the rules learned there tend not to do well (also found out the hard way). For years I've tossed the idea in my head to write a blog post of all the life lessons one learns in school that lead to poor performance at work. Likewise, I'd like to write another post on all the lessons from school that often do translate to the work environment (because it was so ingrained in us), but which leads to suboptimal working conditions. I can't obviously discount your experience, and my school experience was actually quite good - but just as you are aware of the downsides of home schooling, I'm aware of the downsides of schools. If we go beyond anecdotes and to research, I believe most research is in favor of home schooling - both academically and socially.