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My kids are not school age yet, and I am not sure on if I will home school or not. But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homescho

• skeeter2020 11mo ago
  It's going to depend greatly on your geo location and socioeconomic circumstances, but a homeschooled kid who interacts a lot in the neighbourhood (big "if", IME; those kids all have a lot of school friends) is still going to miss out on broader social, cultural, racial and financial exposure. Example: my white, middle-class kids have a lot of people exactly like them in community groups and sports clubs, but lots of eastern european & asian immigrants in their school classes. This is super-important in elementary school when they're far less aware and insular about interacting with people who are "different" IMO
  • damascus 11mo ago
    The venn diagram of 'homeschooled' and 'goes to church regularly' is not quite a circle but its not far off. Moderate to large churches also provide a great deal of socialization in this same way. Cross-socio-economic, racial, and other bases, all with a shared value system that creates a localized high trust environment that affords a greater degree of freedom for child autonomy.
• andyjohnson0 11mo ago
  Having a degree in philosophy or mathematics or whatever does not automatically make someone a good teacher. Teaching - particularly with young children - is a skill that is almost orthogonal to subject knowledge.
  • hombre_fatal 11mo ago
    I think what makes you a good teacher is mostly a personality trait. Prior knowledge of the subject is just a cherry on top.
  • WalterBright 11mo ago
    Teaching ability is an innate feature of human beings. My parents taught me a lot of things. Neither had a teaching degree. At my university, I was taught by professors and grad students, none of whom had a teaching degree.
    • rbanffy 11mo ago
      > Teaching ability is an innate feature of human beings. Distribution seems to follow a bell curve - you’ll usually find the people with exceptional teaching ability harnessing that aptitude in a professional setting.
      • WalterBright 11mo ago
        All features in humans follow a bell curve. Viva la difference! Pretty much all humans can run. Yes, some have exceptional talent at it, and some can barely walk. But the vast majority can run reasonably well. Exceptional talent at teaching is certainly not required for routine learning. Besides, you can buy the workbooks for every level of math, and work it through with the critters. There's no special skill needed. I don't recall any teachers of mine at any level who had any apparent special skill at it. Except for Feynman. I attended one of his lectures. It was amazing! Feynman was at the extreme end of the bell curve, that's for sure.
        • WalterBright 11mo ago
          Let me add to that Herb Sutter. He is very very good at explaining things.
    • HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
      > At my university, I was taught by professors and grad students, none of whom had a teaching degree. Professors and grad students may well have done a course on how to lecture. It is obligatory and/or an easy way to pick up credits in many PhD programs. In any event, grad students teaching badly, because the department has allowed the more competent faculty to put their teaching burden on grad students, is a common complaint about US universities.
• sejje 11mo ago
  I used to work at a YMCA, and the local homeschool group asked us to do a PE class, which I taught. I had the kids doing swimming, rock climbing, and all kinds of traditional PE games. I worked with "normal" kids most of the time, and I will say the homeschool kids stuck out. They're more awkward around kids their age, but far less awkward around adults. They know how to speak and act, in large part. And they were disproportionately ahead of their peers academically--though I think that's probably a selection bias for the parents seeking out homeschool PE classes. This was in the early 2000s, before Facebook. I'm sure the avenues to connect have only grown with social media.
  • JoshTriplett 11mo ago
    > They're more awkward around kids their age, but far less awkward around adults. They know how to speak and act, in large part. This is another argument that "by age" is not the best way to find one's academic or social peers. Some people in 2nd grade should be in high school. Some people in high school should be in 2nd grade. (And, academically, sometimes that's different by subject; some people need to be in 2nd grade math and high-school reading.) I was a TA/lab-assistant at the community college I was attending. I spent a lot of time talking to and helping out people, universally older than me, who had gotten out of high school and needed to figure out where in a multi-year curriculum of remedial math they should start.
    • only-one1701 11mo ago
      This is one of the most insane comments I’ve ever read on a hackernews story. Age is very much important when finding one’s social peers as a child.
      • DANmode 11mo ago
        Why?
        • edoceo 11mo ago
          Under 18, the mind is closer to those +/- a few years from you, developmentally (and generally speaking). At least, that's what the know-it-alls were telling me when I was listening. Both pro and con home-school "zealots". Age peers is a thing
• wildzzz 11mo ago
  You don't need a degree in math to teach children age-appropriate math topics. Teachers don't become teachers just because they have a degree in that subject, they have been taught the methods on how to teach. Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with humans who are not fully formed in their emotions.
  • JoshTriplett 11mo ago
    > Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with humans who are not fully formed in their emotions. I would disagree with this. Those are necessary but not sufficient. It is necessary to have enough knowledge and joy from the subject to convey that to students.
  • chongli 11mo ago
    I have a math degree. I have been volunteer tutoring high school kids in math for 9 years. When a student comes to me for help I can always tell if their teacher has math anxiety. They teach the students extremely rigid methods and refuse to allow alternative approaches to solve the problems. They enforce this with grading and penalize students who don't toe the line. Some of the methods these teachers use are incredibly awkward, bespoke approaches that baffle me for their obtuseness. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with and it has a negative effect on the students. My approach has always been to try to find the method that makes the most sense to the student, and work with them on that. I don't have any issues adapting my style to the student's needs. I only struggle when the spectre of one of those bad math teachers looms over our shoulders.
    • BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
      I wish there was a way to filter out those dumb-dumbs from the teaching profession. Stop ruining students’ future math ability.
• TaupeRanger 11mo ago
  15+ years ago, that might have been the case. Now, you might find some friends in the 3-8 year old range, but then the kids just...don't do things anymore. In both suburban neighborhoods I've lived in the past 10 years, there are basically zero middle school or high school kids doing anything except playing video games and messing around on their phones from the comfort of home. School is quite literally the only social interaction most of these kids get aside from their parents, and if they didn't go to school, they'd just spend more time playing video games or on their phones. Outside of the coasts or university towns, there aren't any "mathematicians" with kids just waiting around to form homeschooling groups with you.
  • Telemakhos 11mo ago
    My cousin homeschooled her kids, who are now finished with college. I know they're capable of using phones (one's a programmer), but I've never seen them pull one out. They're social and love playing board games, and I suspect that comes from their parents. They also socialized with other homeschooled kids, because they were part of lots of homeschooling groups. The kids in public school are there by default; the homeschooling parents are actively choosing to raise their kids differently, and, from what I've seen, they're more likely to interact with their kids instead of letting them go terminally online or play video games.
    • bdangubic 11mo ago
      this is just wild to make some blanked statement about kids that are homeschooled and screen time compared to kids that go to school based on one example. probably 99.97% homeschooled kids spend more time staring at the screens than kids that go to school (if not more)
      • simianparrot 11mo ago
        You’re doing the same thing, except with even less anecdata
        • 11mo ago
• drivebyhooting 11mo ago
  John Jane Mary set up is incredibly idealized. In a big city I have not been able to find anyone willing to commit to anything except one off play dates in a museum which has nothing to do with actual education.
• bena 11mo ago
  It sounds like school with extra steps.
  • lazyasciiart 11mo ago
    And control over who else is in it.
• MarkMarine 11mo ago
  There is no such thing as “the neighborhood kids” anymore. Having any kind of social circle for your children is going to require your facilitation and effort… a lot of it. It’ll be extra hard without the common bond of shared activity. Not knocking what sounds like your choice to homeschool, just sharing something that has changed from my youth.
  • nlavezzo 11mo ago
    There are in fact neighborhood kids. It only takes a couple of families deciding to restrict phones and video games and support their kids in spending real time together. We’ve done this in our neighborhood and it’s great. It just has to be intentional now, where it was the default before all these screens.
• dboreham 11mo ago
  Part of "socializing" is observing that one's parents aren't the absolute authority in the world. Parents sometimes butt heads with teachers, coaches etc. No home schooling scenario can provide this experience. I think it leads to enhanced levels of narcissism in both students and parents.
  • just_mc 11mo ago
    I guess you aren't married. Lol.
  • singpolyma3 11mo ago
    Why would you think homeschooled children have no teachers or coaches for their parents to butt heads with? I assure you this is not the case
• raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
  “Good socializaron experience” is the exact opposite of “religious groups”. Said as someone who went to a private Christian school for 7 years.
• prng2021 11mo ago
  Everytime I see these kinds of arguments, it sounds like someone desperately trying to argue that a park playground is almost as entertaining for kids as an amusement park. Your example of 5 kids socializing with each other is definitely better than 1 kid at home. It’s also definitely worse than learning to socialize in a school of 500 kids each day. This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc.
  • sib 11mo ago
    But it may be much better than dealing with the problems that come with having 500 "random" kids to socialize / interact with. Everything's a tradeoff.
    • only-one1701 11mo ago
      Yeah, wouldn’t want kids to learn how to deal with problems.
      • aeroevan 11mo ago
        Dealing with adult problems shouldn't be something kids have to learn, as long as the problems scale with their development that's not a problem
  • eucyclos 11mo ago
    >This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc. I have such an argument - have you considered the amount of forced social conformity in a public school versus a community of homeschooled people? Humans are weird in a way that 'public school culture' tries to paper over.
    • Melatonic 11mo ago
      What social conformity is forced by schools these days ? Only one I can really remember was we had specific uniforms for PE (basically just gym shorts and a tshirt)
• singpolyma3 11mo ago
  > Plus not all homeschooling is just a student staying at home all day. I would argue if your kid stays home all day you're not better than a school so why would you bother? I know zero homeschoolers keeping their kids locked up at home
• bdangubic 11mo ago
  I would have gotten a vasectomy if I knew my kid had to go through this kind of childhood
• dartharva 11mo ago
  I highly doubt the kind of people who homeschool their kids for popular/narrative reasons have enough cognitive or social capability to make all that happen.
• moron4hire 11mo ago
  > But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. As person who was homeschooled in a large homeschooling community, no, I now believe at a fundamental level that not only is it not possible to adequately difference homeschooled children, it very much defeats the updated-but- always it is not possible to "get good socialization". There are two issues: the gross tonnage of exposure to other people is just not possible in homeschooling, and, there's a fundamental difference between the kinds of socialization. I believe there is value in being forced into socializing with people you may not like. I did not experience what one might call "involuntary socialization" until my first job out of college. It took me a very long time to learn how to exist comfortably in a world where not everyone would agree with me, like me, see me as an equal, or treat me with respect. In institutional education environments and in jobs, you don't get a choice who you have around you. You have to learn how to deal with that. Taking the kids to karate class doesn't teach them that because most everyone at karate class wants to be there. Any voluntary socialization arrangement is--by definition--a self-selection into a group with at least one point of commonality: you are so there for the thing, the activity. Involuntary socialization arrangements expose you to others where your overlapping demographic is nothing more than just geographic circumstance. Many people don't learn how to deal with that in public schools: it's where antisocial behavior comes from. But *every" homeschooled kid will miss that lesson completely.
• gbin 11mo ago
  Yeah but this is basically people with the same social circle and religion etc...
  • anon291 11mo ago
    Which is how the vast majority of the world is and how most of America is. I mean, it's not bad to be around people with different ideas or backgrounds, but it is also not some great requirement.
• MarsIronPI 11mo ago
  > But I do think its possible to get good socialization exposure while homeschooling. Absolutely. I was homeschooled and in my state (Illinois) the laws work out such that homeschool students can enroll in public school classes if the school has space for them. That's how I socialized. So I got at least a modicrum of socialization (especially once I started band) but wasn't dragged down by the mediocre education at our local public schools.