5 ms·

The author's observation about high school is exactly why my kids, by default, will be home schooled. If they decide they want to go to public or private school

by aculver 14y ago

The author's observation about high school is exactly why my kids, by default, will be home schooled. If they decide they want to go to public or private school at some point, I'll let them. Unlike a lot of kids that end up getting bullied, they'll know that their attendance is completely optional. I'm not looking to shelter them from the real world, only the fake miniature society that exists at school.

j45 14y ago
I dealt with some really harsh stuff in school. I only remember my real friends. Learning how to pick you're real friends based on loyalty, character, values and doing the right thing is critical. I won't tell you not to home school your kids. I will ask you to make sure they have the years of social interaction skills to find those other unique lone souls who do their thing regardless. I'll ask you to ensure they learn how to deal with all kinda of people in the real world, unless you plan door them to forever telecommute.
jenius 14y ago
While I understand your point of view based on this one observation, I think this is a terrible idea if you look at the big picture. Whether they get bullied or not, high school is an extremely important time for kids to gain social skills and learn how to deal with people. Dealing with people is one of the most important skills you can have, period. And that often means dealing with people that are being dicks, and people who you like and are good friends. And if people are being dicks, which they inevitably will be, it's a good time for you to think about it, build your self confidence, and figure out who you are. I understand that sheltering them from the real world is not your motivation for this opinion, but it is the reality of what will happen. Your kids will miss out on a huge period of personal growth and a large expansion of their experience dealing with other people which they will never be able to get back later.
- euroclydon 14y ago
  I think it's interesting to hear more about offensive homeschooling. For instance, my brother is a senior commercial pilot. He has two high school aged boys who have been homeschooled all their life. They play (American) football in the fall and spend the rest of the year traveling the country for competitive sailboat races and catching free flights to Asia, Africa, South America and more with their mom.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- onli 14y ago
  Totally agree, just want to add that their are different kind of schools and different kind of kids. If your kid really gets bullied, you can still change the school or send them to a fitting school in the first place. Not an ordinary high-school. "Just" have to make sure your kids would tell you. An besides, even though bullying is unhealthy for the bullied kid, is a great experience to learn how that stops if you bash the right people, how to hack and influence society (maybe not something you want your kid to learn though).
- invalidOrTaken 14y ago
  Upvoted you both. Thank you for the civil disagreement that (unfortunately) is part of what makes HN special.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- exDM69 14y ago
  While high school can be a social learning experience (an awkward one), the outcome of it may not be entirely positive. In high school, I learned how to smoke, drink, fight, cheat and steal. I almost gave up programming as a hobby because it was weird in the eyes of my peers. I narrowly escaped a life of crime by moving to a different city as soon as I was old enough. Man, I'm happy to be out of that shit and out of that neighborhood. And almost out of school (finishing my masters').
- chernevik 14y ago
  I would add that, if you have time to home school, you have time to help your kids build accomplishments that build confidence that carries through other people's crap. A kid who achieves at sports / art / theater / computers / whatever has reason to _know_ they aren't little. Kids need help to organize themselves to achieve because the links between planning, persisting, studying fundamentals, spotting and handling emotional challenges and the emotional rewards are diffuse. It's hard to build the positive associations that build habits, and that's where parents can help. (Yes, it's hard to find the line between encouraging and demanding.) Home schooling might be a necessary response to the schooling available. But social deprivation is a downside of any home schooling program, kids must learn to deal with other people. Better to meet frictions by building the kids up, rather than avoiding the frictions in the first place.
- Spyro7 14y ago
  "I understand that sheltering them from the real world is not your motivation for this opinion, but it is the reality of what will happen. Your kids will miss out on a huge period of personal growth and a large expansion of their experience dealing with other people which they will never be able to get back later." It is not necessarily the case that being homeschooled automatically equates to a child that has been sheltered from the real world. In reality, whether or not a child has missed out due to homeschooling depends heavily on the parents that are doing the homeschooling. A parent can homeschool their child and simulate a private school by integrating classes (with groups of children) from museums, libraries, and independent instructors. A parent can also homeschool their child by putting on a DVD and walking away. I was homeschooled from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. My parents relied on a lot of external classes to ensure that I was still able to develop the ability to interact with others. The reality for me was that I was able to have a far richer social environment as a result of my being homeschooled. By the time that I entered college, I had interacted with far more cultures and personality types than most of those around me. I went on to successfully complete my undergraduate and graduate degrees. When I was homeschooled, I kept in contact with a small handful of friends that were also homeschooled. They all went on to do just fine in both college and in life. I realize that my experiences and those of my peers are anecdotal, but a study performed by the Discovery Institute in 2000 also provided evidence that there is no "sheltering" involved with most homeschools: http://www.discovery.org/a/3479 http://www.discovery.org/a/3479 (Please note, I actually take issue with a few things in the Discovery Institute study, but I think that it does provide some degree of evidence that homeschooling does not automatically result in a maladjusted child.) In my economics courses, we would sometimes take a look at the economic returns of education. I always found it strangely comical when someone would speak harshly about how homeschoolers are "sheltered" and then turn to me for moral support. It was always such a shock to everyone to hear that I had been homeschooled for my entire life. Some people even called me a liar outright. (I have always wondered what is it about homeschooling that seems to rub people the wrong way?) I am well-spoken, outgoing, and have an easy time dealing with people. I do not say this (or anything else in this post) braggingly, but I say it to give credit to my parents for what their sacrifices were able to accomplish for me. You say that "sheltering" is the "reality" of what will happen, but how are you so sure of this? I believe that the results of homeschooling, much like other forms of schooling, is a product of the teacher, the student, and the approach. I do not disagree that sometimes, with homeschooling, some children are not able to develop social skills. What I disagree with, strongly, is your insinuation that "sheltering is the reality of homeschool". Homeschooling a child does not automatically mean that the child will struggle socially.
- chimpinee 14y ago
  >gain social skills and learn how to deal with people Learning to get on with people is important but school isn't such a good place to do that. The social atmosphere in schools is abysmal. A combination of obedience to authority and placating bullies. It's more like being in the army, or in prison, than a modern workplace or a group of friends. At least in a group of friends you can talk freely, without needing permission or being teased. I think one learns more subtle and useful social skills from interacting with friends (i.e. voluntary relationships, where either party is free to leave) and from interacting with colleagues. In my case, this occurred in the years just after school. I won't say that school doesn't teach a certain amount of valuable knowledge, but that knowledge can be obtained elsewhere, without the huge overhead of learning to share space with bullies, thugs, and people in authority who think they know what is best for you. And I haven't mentioned the enormous cost of schooling: 12 years of your young life (instead of doing more enjoyable things that you stand to learn far more from). And for most people, stunting of individuality and destruction of creativity (which cripples the ability to learn new things later in life). I think most people just assume that schools are good places to learn social skills because they were forced to go through it themselves, so they had to embrace it at the time. After a while, they look back with nostalgia, forgetting how much boredom and fear they had to endure.
- michaelrp 14y ago
  First of all, high school (for all its positives and negatives--and there are plenty of positives) is NOT the real world. Schools are the only places where there is such a high concentration of like-aged and experienced people. They are, especially in the U.S., carefully fabricated and constructed environments, often with their own sets of rules and regulations different from what one would expect any place else. (You need to raise your hand and ask permission to go to the bathroom? Someone can torment and bully you with impunity and its your own responsibility to learn to "deal" with it?) Second, homeschoolers interact with many different kinds of people all of the time. Our kids play in community ensembles, participate in non-school sporting leagues, attend music and theater performances (during the day!), and experience the world with us in general. They have close friends their own age and younger and older. The "home" and the "school" in homeschool is misleading. Many of us spend significant parts of our days out of the home. And to us (and I think to many other readers here) "school" is not synonymous with "learn". A school is a building or an institution. People don't learn because they are "in school", they learn because they want to (or need to, I guess). We treat our own homeschooled kids as if they are, well, just people. My job as a parent is to provide for them (love, shelter, food, space--I'm an angel investor) and their job is to explore, learn, grow, adapt, think, do. For us this works better without an institution involved.
- ef4 14y ago
  The thing is: school is nothing like the real world. It teaches you how to deal with school. School is a very weird, twisted little society where none of the work has any real point, there's no source of purpose other than pure social approval, and everybody is either the same age or an authority figure. The strategies you use for dealing with difficult people in the real world are completely different from what you have to do in school. Same goes for how to find friends, or how to decide what to do. That's precisely why everyone is always saying "it will get better after you get out of high school". Because the conditions in school are not at all representative of the rest of your life.
  - eru 14y ago
    > [...] and everybody is either the same age or an authority figure. At least nominally. Plenty of teachers turn into laughing stock.
  - vacri 14y ago
    Just because high school is unpleasant for some and it will get better for them afterwards, does not mean none of the work has any real point, or that you learn nothing.
  - base698 14y ago
    "School is a very weird, twisted little society where none of the work has any real point" Of course it has a point: learning. Whether it is successful in that end is up for debate :)
  - xixi77 14y ago
    This is so very true.
windsurfer 14y ago
I went to Bell High school in Canada as a gifted student, and I can say that I never experienced any kind of bullying - and I was very weird. Everyone was weird. It was great, and very much not like elementary school.
- tedkalaw 14y ago
  Is that a magnet school? I went to a magnet school and my experience was pretty good. Sure, there were "jocks" - but their "power" is vastly diminished in a school where kids are sad if they don't get A's. As you said, it's like minded people being in the same place. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to a school like that.
  - windsurfer 14y ago
    I am not sure what a magnet school is but it was funded by the public school board and still accepted regular students. If you wanted to go and were outside its normal jurisdiction, you had to have an IQ above a certain percentile.
dsrguru 14y ago
Do realize that homeschooling has its cons as well. It can certainly provide a better academic education than a regular school if you use more efficient teaching methods than schools do, but you'll need to also expose your child to real people his or her age. If you do this through summer camp or after school activities, most of the children will have gone to regular schools and will, therefore, exhibit similar behavior to children at regular schools. Regardless of whether your child attends a traditional school or is homeschooled, try to raise your child in a way that promotes confidence and a high self-esteem. Confidence is one of the best preventative measures at countering bullying, and it's very helpful in life. And make sure your child has avenues to make good friends. As this article shows, if that's not happening at school, encourage them to go somewhere where they'll find people with similar interests, be it a gym or club or whatever.
- kilian 14y ago
  I think this is the best advice. It's not about avoiding bullying (though that would be nice), it's about being confident despite what other might do or say. Sheltering won't help. Giving them confidence and self esteem (i.e. it's not you that's weird, but them, and you'll find that out once you get out of this town/high school/whatever) however, will.
fredericdb 14y ago
Lets all hide our weirdness at home. Lets not demonstrate to all miniature societies that weirdness exists in the world and its beautiful. Lets sit at home and wonder why the world is so different from ourselves and loath it.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Even better, lets sit in our manor house on the hill overlooking the world. The kind with the thick iron gates and guard dogs. We can watch all the people outside set the world in a terrible blaze. It's better to just watch the world burn. Training your kids to hide from the worlds badness is a net negative in the bigger picture.
roguecoder 14y ago
It doesn't necessarily help. I speak from experience: I was homeschooled and it was terrible. I didn't learn the 101 little tricks to make interacting with frustrating people that little bit easier, I didn't learn to empathize with people less smart than me and I didn't develop the social intelligence that I believe is vital for long-term success. Any time I had to interact with anyone I felt terrible and awkward and out of place. When I went to college I was as alienated and lonely as everyone else had been in high school and I still didn't have casual friends because I didn't know how to be friends with anyone who didn't already share my interests. I didn't understand letting other people talk in class, or that school was for learning, not achieving things, or that I could make people happy by listening to things I didn't care about (and in the process learn about interesting things I never knew I'd be interested in.) When I got a job I didn't understand that jobs are for collaboration, not just achieving things myself. Most team jobs work best if members are able and willing to sublimate their egos for the good of the group: I was busy being smart and weird. I assumed that because I was right everyone else would, of course, agree with me, and so none of my ideas ever got adopted because I didn't know how to enlist people as allies. I was still super lonely and still hadn't learn how to have casual friends (close friends I always had, one or two, mostly other homeschooled kids, but they were people who could put up with me just the way I was, which was kind of an arrogant asshole.) I eventually sat down and compared myself to people who were less lonely than me and figured out what I could do differently. I realized that I'd rather not be an asshole than be right. I developed an understanding of when and how to ask questions, how to work and, yes, fit in with a group while still keeping myself whole. I learned how to be passionate without being overwhelming. My kids are going to school. I will fight tooth and nail for a safe environment for them with adults who are on their side and not on the side of the bullies, but I want them to grow up knowing that if you tell your friend to fuck off they will stop being your friend because you are an asshole, not because you are weird. If you are not enjoyable to interact with people won't be your friend because friendship isn't an entitlement: it's a collaborative project. It may be that if you find a huge city you can find someone who doesn't mind being told to fuck off, or maybe even who thinks it is cool, but that doesn't mean that prioritizing your weirdness over the comfort of people around you will lead to a fulfilling social life (especially because those people are likely to tell you to fuck off too). Developing friends will probably have as much to do with how we change and grow as it does with leaving suburbia. Besides, we have the Internet now. There is no reason kids can't both learn to be part of suburbia and experience the wide world outside of it at the same time.
purp 14y ago
It's about building their confidence from age 0. It's about making and reinforcing a community of respect for difference wherever you are. And it's about being sure that your kids know they're never really out there all by themselves. Our kids go to public school, are healthily wonky in different (and wonderful) ways, and have friends who are healthily wonky in other different (and wonderful) ways. We live in a community that, among other things, had spirited discussions about bullying years ago. We live there despite a long daily commute for me because we believe that having a good environment is almost as important as being good parents. They look to you to tell them what's good and bad. Choose carefully the lessons you give, explicit or other.
japhyr 14y ago
I am tempted to homeschool my kid for a number of reasons, but I also really want him to socialize with other kids in school. Does anyone have experience with being homeschooled for half-days, or something along those lines?
dholowiski 14y ago
I couldn't agree more, but I guess it depends on the school. Bullying was rampant in my school and the teachers were horrible (I like to think they were/are criminally negligent). A few years after I graduated, someone who was bullied brought a gun to school and started shooting (Killed 1 injured a few more). Little has changed since. To me, school is a terrible, horrible place that I would never wish upon any child, and if I had kids I would never send them to such a place.
tjoff 14y ago
The by far most important thing you learn in school is being social. That dwarfs everything else. Yes, being bullied sucks but keep in mind that your kids will have to meet other kids as well, and if they are homeschooled they are going to appear weird just because they don't go to school and thus don't behave the same in crowds as everyone else does (trust me, this gets noticed instantly). That alone is basis enough for being bullied and that will only make them retract even more to the comfort of your home - and that could arguably be even worse than being bullied (in the long run). Any kid that gets bullied is of course a serious problem and should be dealt with as best as possible (although it is a very hard problem to solve).
- Gring 14y ago
  What? No. Absolutely not. Being bullied is not because you behave wrongly. You're being bullied because they others are assholes. In the adult realm, there are still people behaving differently. And they're not getting bullied. You know why not? Because there is a state that punishes bullying among adults. We need only one thing: punish bullying among non-adults. Currently they get a free pass. And every generation a million kids get scarred for life. No more.
  - tjoff 14y ago
    Of course. What I meant was that homeschooling in order to try and avoid bullying might just as well backfire. Didn't mean that it was somehow justified but bullying among kids isn't easy to combat.
  - vacri 14y ago
    Adults frequently bully other adults, both in work and leisure time.
pkteison 14y ago
I went to big public schools. I was valedictorian, a big geek, complete social misfit, bullied mocked and occasionally beaten, and I'm still a fan of public schools. Those social challenges were the most important lessons. Sometimes I have to make nice, sometimes the group of bullies aren't all jerks, sometimes I need to treat them as individuals, always I need to look for their motivations, sometimes they are even somewhat right and I'm in the wrong even if I don't agree with their method of resolving the dispute. The public school environment exposed me to the most different groups of folks available and made us all interact. Even in technical jobs and working for programming firms, my bosses and coworkers have included a lot more of the folks I never got along with than the folks I identified with, there are just more of them out there in the world, and I am glad I have a clue why they don't like some things and what I can do to minimize or handle the conflicts. It's probably not for everyone - it takes a fair bit of personal motivation to still learn when it clearly isn't strictly required of you - but it isn't automatically bad. At the age when it would have mattered, I would not have had the wisdom to make the right choice. If my parents had offered me the chance to not deal with my problems, I would have jumped at it, and been worse for that choice.
possibilistic 14y ago
Take the negative feedback you're getting with a grain of salt. All anecdotal evidence will support different claims; it simply comes down to planning. I was homeschooled from the 7th grade, and from what I can tell I'm better off. I was able to focus on my own educational interests--computing and science. I launched a series of small, but cashflow positive websites. I studied Japanese through a free program by GPB for two years (another two via distance learning at University of Alabama) and ultimately found my way into teaching English in Obihiro / Tokatchi for half a year before I started college. I now find myself with a bunch of really great friends and colleagues; I've lived, loved, made mistakes and wonderful experiences. And I'm pretty sure your kids will too. I'm sorry for brevity, but my phone sucks. If you want to discuss homeschooling topics and strategies at length, feel free to email me.
datagramm 14y ago
On the home-schooling argument. I'm not saying you shouldn't home school your kids, but in my opinion avoiding bullies is not the best reason to do so. I can understand that people want to protect their kids, but I think it's much more effective to teach them to deal with it rather than just avoiding it. I think it's incredibly short sighted to think that bullying just stops once school ends. People just learn to deal with it through years of practice. Learning to deal with crap like this is an incredibly valuable life skill and if you don't learn it at school you're going to have to learn it later in life. Sure, kids can be a lot more cruel than adults, but delaying the inevitable solves nothing. I went to a state school in the north of England which could be described as 'rough' at best. Like many geeks I never really fitted in and was the subject of some fairly severe bullying at times. Like most people that were bullied (and anecdotal evidence would suggest that most people were bullied at one time or another) I got through it and never looked back. As soon as I gave up trying to fit in (and even started going out of my way not to fit in) people respected me a little more for it and life got easier. Not that I want to tell people how they they should raise their kids here. I don't even have any kids of my own. But having been a child for a number of years I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the matter.
wtracy 14y ago
I'm a little surprised by all the negative responses you're getting. I and my sister were homeschooled from day one. We turned out fine. We're both gainfully employed, and I'm president of a local community group. :-) The second half of high school we basically took the "remedial" classes at the local community college. I got almost straight A's. I remember spending more time socializing with adults than with kids my own age, but I hardly consider that a bad thing. (Today I still do things like play with Lego, so I don't think I was warped by this.) After some of the horror stories I've heard about public high schools, I honestly worry that I might have attempted suicide at one of those places.

by aculver 14y ago

j45 14y ago

I dealt with some really harsh stuff in school. I only remember my real friends. Learning how to pick you're real friends based on loyalty, character, values and doing the right thing is critical. I won't tell you not to home school your kids. I will ask you to make sure they have the years of social interaction skills to find those other unique lone souls who do their thing regardless. I'll ask you to ensure they learn how to deal with all kinda of people in the real world, unless you plan door them to forever telecommute.

jenius 14y ago

While I understand your point of view based on this one observation, I think this is a terrible idea if you look at the big picture. Whether they get bullied or not, high school is an extremely important time for kids to gain social skills and learn how to deal with people. Dealing with people is one of the most important skills you can have, period. And that often means dealing with people that are being dicks, and people who you like and are good friends. And if people are being dicks, which they inevitably will be, it's a good time for you to think about it, build your self confidence, and figure out who you are. I understand that sheltering them from the real world is not your motivation for this opinion, but it is the reality of what will happen. Your kids will miss out on a huge period of personal growth and a large expansion of their experience dealing with other people which they will never be able to get back later.

euroclydon 14y ago
I think it's interesting to hear more about offensive homeschooling. For instance, my brother is a senior commercial pilot. He has two high school aged boys who have been homeschooled all their life. They play (American) football in the fall and spend the rest of the year traveling the country for competitive sailboat races and catching free flights to Asia, Africa, South America and more with their mom.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
onli 14y ago
Totally agree, just want to add that their are different kind of schools and different kind of kids. If your kid really gets bullied, you can still change the school or send them to a fitting school in the first place. Not an ordinary high-school. "Just" have to make sure your kids would tell you. An besides, even though bullying is unhealthy for the bullied kid, is a great experience to learn how that stops if you bash the right people, how to hack and influence society (maybe not something you want your kid to learn though).
invalidOrTaken 14y ago
Upvoted you both. Thank you for the civil disagreement that (unfortunately) is part of what makes HN special.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
exDM69 14y ago
While high school can be a social learning experience (an awkward one), the outcome of it may not be entirely positive. In high school, I learned how to smoke, drink, fight, cheat and steal. I almost gave up programming as a hobby because it was weird in the eyes of my peers. I narrowly escaped a life of crime by moving to a different city as soon as I was old enough. Man, I'm happy to be out of that shit and out of that neighborhood. And almost out of school (finishing my masters').
chernevik 14y ago
I would add that, if you have time to home school, you have time to help your kids build accomplishments that build confidence that carries through other people's crap. A kid who achieves at sports / art / theater / computers / whatever has reason to _know_ they aren't little. Kids need help to organize themselves to achieve because the links between planning, persisting, studying fundamentals, spotting and handling emotional challenges and the emotional rewards are diffuse. It's hard to build the positive associations that build habits, and that's where parents can help. (Yes, it's hard to find the line between encouraging and demanding.) Home schooling might be a necessary response to the schooling available. But social deprivation is a downside of any home schooling program, kids must learn to deal with other people. Better to meet frictions by building the kids up, rather than avoiding the frictions in the first place.
Spyro7 14y ago
"I understand that sheltering them from the real world is not your motivation for this opinion, but it is the reality of what will happen. Your kids will miss out on a huge period of personal growth and a large expansion of their experience dealing with other people which they will never be able to get back later." It is not necessarily the case that being homeschooled automatically equates to a child that has been sheltered from the real world. In reality, whether or not a child has missed out due to homeschooling depends heavily on the parents that are doing the homeschooling. A parent can homeschool their child and simulate a private school by integrating classes (with groups of children) from museums, libraries, and independent instructors. A parent can also homeschool their child by putting on a DVD and walking away. I was homeschooled from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. My parents relied on a lot of external classes to ensure that I was still able to develop the ability to interact with others. The reality for me was that I was able to have a far richer social environment as a result of my being homeschooled. By the time that I entered college, I had interacted with far more cultures and personality types than most of those around me. I went on to successfully complete my undergraduate and graduate degrees. When I was homeschooled, I kept in contact with a small handful of friends that were also homeschooled. They all went on to do just fine in both college and in life. I realize that my experiences and those of my peers are anecdotal, but a study performed by the Discovery Institute in 2000 also provided evidence that there is no "sheltering" involved with most homeschools: http://www.discovery.org/a/3479 http://www.discovery.org/a/3479 (Please note, I actually take issue with a few things in the Discovery Institute study, but I think that it does provide some degree of evidence that homeschooling does not automatically result in a maladjusted child.) In my economics courses, we would sometimes take a look at the economic returns of education. I always found it strangely comical when someone would speak harshly about how homeschoolers are "sheltered" and then turn to me for moral support. It was always such a shock to everyone to hear that I had been homeschooled for my entire life. Some people even called me a liar outright. (I have always wondered what is it about homeschooling that seems to rub people the wrong way?) I am well-spoken, outgoing, and have an easy time dealing with people. I do not say this (or anything else in this post) braggingly, but I say it to give credit to my parents for what their sacrifices were able to accomplish for me. You say that "sheltering" is the "reality" of what will happen, but how are you so sure of this? I believe that the results of homeschooling, much like other forms of schooling, is a product of the teacher, the student, and the approach. I do not disagree that sometimes, with homeschooling, some children are not able to develop social skills. What I disagree with, strongly, is your insinuation that "sheltering is the reality of homeschool". Homeschooling a child does not automatically mean that the child will struggle socially.
chimpinee 14y ago
>gain social skills and learn how to deal with people Learning to get on with people is important but school isn't such a good place to do that. The social atmosphere in schools is abysmal. A combination of obedience to authority and placating bullies. It's more like being in the army, or in prison, than a modern workplace or a group of friends. At least in a group of friends you can talk freely, without needing permission or being teased. I think one learns more subtle and useful social skills from interacting with friends (i.e. voluntary relationships, where either party is free to leave) and from interacting with colleagues. In my case, this occurred in the years just after school. I won't say that school doesn't teach a certain amount of valuable knowledge, but that knowledge can be obtained elsewhere, without the huge overhead of learning to share space with bullies, thugs, and people in authority who think they know what is best for you. And I haven't mentioned the enormous cost of schooling: 12 years of your young life (instead of doing more enjoyable things that you stand to learn far more from). And for most people, stunting of individuality and destruction of creativity (which cripples the ability to learn new things later in life). I think most people just assume that schools are good places to learn social skills because they were forced to go through it themselves, so they had to embrace it at the time. After a while, they look back with nostalgia, forgetting how much boredom and fear they had to endure.
michaelrp 14y ago
First of all, high school (for all its positives and negatives--and there are plenty of positives) is NOT the real world. Schools are the only places where there is such a high concentration of like-aged and experienced people. They are, especially in the U.S., carefully fabricated and constructed environments, often with their own sets of rules and regulations different from what one would expect any place else. (You need to raise your hand and ask permission to go to the bathroom? Someone can torment and bully you with impunity and its your own responsibility to learn to "deal" with it?) Second, homeschoolers interact with many different kinds of people all of the time. Our kids play in community ensembles, participate in non-school sporting leagues, attend music and theater performances (during the day!), and experience the world with us in general. They have close friends their own age and younger and older. The "home" and the "school" in homeschool is misleading. Many of us spend significant parts of our days out of the home. And to us (and I think to many other readers here) "school" is not synonymous with "learn". A school is a building or an institution. People don't learn because they are "in school", they learn because they want to (or need to, I guess). We treat our own homeschooled kids as if they are, well, just people. My job as a parent is to provide for them (love, shelter, food, space--I'm an angel investor) and their job is to explore, learn, grow, adapt, think, do. For us this works better without an institution involved.
ef4 14y ago
The thing is: school is nothing like the real world. It teaches you how to deal with school. School is a very weird, twisted little society where none of the work has any real point, there's no source of purpose other than pure social approval, and everybody is either the same age or an authority figure. The strategies you use for dealing with difficult people in the real world are completely different from what you have to do in school. Same goes for how to find friends, or how to decide what to do. That's precisely why everyone is always saying "it will get better after you get out of high school". Because the conditions in school are not at all representative of the rest of your life.
- eru 14y ago
  > [...] and everybody is either the same age or an authority figure. At least nominally. Plenty of teachers turn into laughing stock.
- vacri 14y ago
  Just because high school is unpleasant for some and it will get better for them afterwards, does not mean none of the work has any real point, or that you learn nothing.
- base698 14y ago
  "School is a very weird, twisted little society where none of the work has any real point" Of course it has a point: learning. Whether it is successful in that end is up for debate :)
- xixi77 14y ago
  This is so very true.

windsurfer 14y ago

I went to Bell High school in Canada as a gifted student, and I can say that I never experienced any kind of bullying - and I was very weird. Everyone was weird. It was great, and very much not like elementary school.

tedkalaw 14y ago
Is that a magnet school? I went to a magnet school and my experience was pretty good. Sure, there were "jocks" - but their "power" is vastly diminished in a school where kids are sad if they don't get A's. As you said, it's like minded people being in the same place. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to a school like that.
- windsurfer 14y ago
  I am not sure what a magnet school is but it was funded by the public school board and still accepted regular students. If you wanted to go and were outside its normal jurisdiction, you had to have an IQ above a certain percentile.

dsrguru 14y ago

Do realize that homeschooling has its cons as well. It can certainly provide a better academic education than a regular school if you use more efficient teaching methods than schools do, but you'll need to also expose your child to real people his or her age. If you do this through summer camp or after school activities, most of the children will have gone to regular schools and will, therefore, exhibit similar behavior to children at regular schools. Regardless of whether your child attends a traditional school or is homeschooled, try to raise your child in a way that promotes confidence and a high self-esteem. Confidence is one of the best preventative measures at countering bullying, and it's very helpful in life. And make sure your child has avenues to make good friends. As this article shows, if that's not happening at school, encourage them to go somewhere where they'll find people with similar interests, be it a gym or club or whatever.

kilian 14y ago
I think this is the best advice. It's not about avoiding bullying (though that would be nice), it's about being confident despite what other might do or say. Sheltering won't help. Giving them confidence and self esteem (i.e. it's not you that's weird, but them, and you'll find that out once you get out of this town/high school/whatever) however, will.

fredericdb 14y ago

Lets all hide our weirdness at home. Lets not demonstrate to all miniature societies that weirdness exists in the world and its beautiful. Lets sit at home and wonder why the world is so different from ourselves and loath it.

unimpressive 14y ago
Even better, lets sit in our manor house on the hill overlooking the world. The kind with the thick iron gates and guard dogs. We can watch all the people outside set the world in a terrible blaze. It's better to just watch the world burn. Training your kids to hide from the worlds badness is a net negative in the bigger picture.

roguecoder 14y ago

It doesn't necessarily help. I speak from experience: I was homeschooled and it was terrible. I didn't learn the 101 little tricks to make interacting with frustrating people that little bit easier, I didn't learn to empathize with people less smart than me and I didn't develop the social intelligence that I believe is vital for long-term success. Any time I had to interact with anyone I felt terrible and awkward and out of place. When I went to college I was as alienated and lonely as everyone else had been in high school and I still didn't have casual friends because I didn't know how to be friends with anyone who didn't already share my interests. I didn't understand letting other people talk in class, or that school was for learning, not achieving things, or that I could make people happy by listening to things I didn't care about (and in the process learn about interesting things I never knew I'd be interested in.) When I got a job I didn't understand that jobs are for collaboration, not just achieving things myself. Most team jobs work best if members are able and willing to sublimate their egos for the good of the group: I was busy being smart and weird. I assumed that because I was right everyone else would, of course, agree with me, and so none of my ideas ever got adopted because I didn't know how to enlist people as allies. I was still super lonely and still hadn't learn how to have casual friends (close friends I always had, one or two, mostly other homeschooled kids, but they were people who could put up with me just the way I was, which was kind of an arrogant asshole.) I eventually sat down and compared myself to people who were less lonely than me and figured out what I could do differently. I realized that I'd rather not be an asshole than be right. I developed an understanding of when and how to ask questions, how to work and, yes, fit in with a group while still keeping myself whole. I learned how to be passionate without being overwhelming. My kids are going to school. I will fight tooth and nail for a safe environment for them with adults who are on their side and not on the side of the bullies, but I want them to grow up knowing that if you tell your friend to fuck off they will stop being your friend because you are an asshole, not because you are weird. If you are not enjoyable to interact with people won't be your friend because friendship isn't an entitlement: it's a collaborative project. It may be that if you find a huge city you can find someone who doesn't mind being told to fuck off, or maybe even who thinks it is cool, but that doesn't mean that prioritizing your weirdness over the comfort of people around you will lead to a fulfilling social life (especially because those people are likely to tell you to fuck off too). Developing friends will probably have as much to do with how we change and grow as it does with leaving suburbia. Besides, we have the Internet now. There is no reason kids can't both learn to be part of suburbia and experience the wide world outside of it at the same time.

purp 14y ago

It's about building their confidence from age 0. It's about making and reinforcing a community of respect for difference wherever you are. And it's about being sure that your kids know they're never really out there all by themselves. Our kids go to public school, are healthily wonky in different (and wonderful) ways, and have friends who are healthily wonky in other different (and wonderful) ways. We live in a community that, among other things, had spirited discussions about bullying years ago. We live there despite a long daily commute for me because we believe that having a good environment is almost as important as being good parents. They look to you to tell them what's good and bad. Choose carefully the lessons you give, explicit or other.

japhyr 14y ago

I am tempted to homeschool my kid for a number of reasons, but I also really want him to socialize with other kids in school. Does anyone have experience with being homeschooled for half-days, or something along those lines?

dholowiski 14y ago

I couldn't agree more, but I guess it depends on the school. Bullying was rampant in my school and the teachers were horrible (I like to think they were/are criminally negligent). A few years after I graduated, someone who was bullied brought a gun to school and started shooting (Killed 1 injured a few more). Little has changed since. To me, school is a terrible, horrible place that I would never wish upon any child, and if I had kids I would never send them to such a place.

tjoff 14y ago

The by far most important thing you learn in school is being social. That dwarfs everything else. Yes, being bullied sucks but keep in mind that your kids will have to meet other kids as well, and if they are homeschooled they are going to appear weird just because they don't go to school and thus don't behave the same in crowds as everyone else does (trust me, this gets noticed instantly). That alone is basis enough for being bullied and that will only make them retract even more to the comfort of your home - and that could arguably be even worse than being bullied (in the long run). Any kid that gets bullied is of course a serious problem and should be dealt with as best as possible (although it is a very hard problem to solve).

Gring 14y ago
What? No. Absolutely not. Being bullied is not because you behave wrongly. You're being bullied because they others are assholes. In the adult realm, there are still people behaving differently. And they're not getting bullied. You know why not? Because there is a state that punishes bullying among adults. We need only one thing: punish bullying among non-adults. Currently they get a free pass. And every generation a million kids get scarred for life. No more.
- tjoff 14y ago
  Of course. What I meant was that homeschooling in order to try and avoid bullying might just as well backfire. Didn't mean that it was somehow justified but bullying among kids isn't easy to combat.
- vacri 14y ago
  Adults frequently bully other adults, both in work and leisure time.

pkteison 14y ago

I went to big public schools. I was valedictorian, a big geek, complete social misfit, bullied mocked and occasionally beaten, and I'm still a fan of public schools. Those social challenges were the most important lessons. Sometimes I have to make nice, sometimes the group of bullies aren't all jerks, sometimes I need to treat them as individuals, always I need to look for their motivations, sometimes they are even somewhat right and I'm in the wrong even if I don't agree with their method of resolving the dispute. The public school environment exposed me to the most different groups of folks available and made us all interact. Even in technical jobs and working for programming firms, my bosses and coworkers have included a lot more of the folks I never got along with than the folks I identified with, there are just more of them out there in the world, and I am glad I have a clue why they don't like some things and what I can do to minimize or handle the conflicts. It's probably not for everyone - it takes a fair bit of personal motivation to still learn when it clearly isn't strictly required of you - but it isn't automatically bad. At the age when it would have mattered, I would not have had the wisdom to make the right choice. If my parents had offered me the chance to not deal with my problems, I would have jumped at it, and been worse for that choice.

possibilistic 14y ago

Take the negative feedback you're getting with a grain of salt. All anecdotal evidence will support different claims; it simply comes down to planning. I was homeschooled from the 7th grade, and from what I can tell I'm better off. I was able to focus on my own educational interests--computing and science. I launched a series of small, but cashflow positive websites. I studied Japanese through a free program by GPB for two years (another two via distance learning at University of Alabama) and ultimately found my way into teaching English in Obihiro / Tokatchi for half a year before I started college. I now find myself with a bunch of really great friends and colleagues; I've lived, loved, made mistakes and wonderful experiences. And I'm pretty sure your kids will too. I'm sorry for brevity, but my phone sucks. If you want to discuss homeschooling topics and strategies at length, feel free to email me.

datagramm 14y ago

On the home-schooling argument. I'm not saying you shouldn't home school your kids, but in my opinion avoiding bullies is not the best reason to do so. I can understand that people want to protect their kids, but I think it's much more effective to teach them to deal with it rather than just avoiding it. I think it's incredibly short sighted to think that bullying just stops once school ends. People just learn to deal with it through years of practice. Learning to deal with crap like this is an incredibly valuable life skill and if you don't learn it at school you're going to have to learn it later in life. Sure, kids can be a lot more cruel than adults, but delaying the inevitable solves nothing. I went to a state school in the north of England which could be described as 'rough' at best. Like many geeks I never really fitted in and was the subject of some fairly severe bullying at times. Like most people that were bullied (and anecdotal evidence would suggest that most people were bullied at one time or another) I got through it and never looked back. As soon as I gave up trying to fit in (and even started going out of my way not to fit in) people respected me a little more for it and life got easier. Not that I want to tell people how they they should raise their kids here. I don't even have any kids of my own. But having been a child for a number of years I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the matter.

wtracy 14y ago

I'm a little surprised by all the negative responses you're getting. I and my sister were homeschooled from day one. We turned out fine. We're both gainfully employed, and I'm president of a local community group. :-) The second half of high school we basically took the "remedial" classes at the local community college. I got almost straight A's. I remember spending more time socializing with adults than with kids my own age, but I hardly consider that a bad thing. (Today I still do things like play with Lego, so I don't think I was warped by this.) After some of the horror stories I've heard about public high schools, I honestly worry that I might have attempted suicide at one of those places.