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For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

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Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#71

Post by edmundsauto »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends, and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out with others because most of my social time wa…

I was public schooled and also felt uncomfortable sitting around hanging out, without a purpose or a goal or activity. May not be home schooling that is the cause - people are just different.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#73

Post by rayiner »

jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

[flagged]

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#74

Post by bawolff »

foogazi wrote: post #15
mythrwy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument about lack of socialization from failure to attend public school might have some basis. But thinking back, I came out of the public schools with some pretty anti social behaviors and attitudes that I picked up there. Being cool is so important at that age in that setting. I often wonder what life would have been like had I been taken out say, age 12 or 13 and given a more solid education to match my natu…

> Being cool is so important at that age in that setting. is it ? Maybe it just comes down to personality In my mind I was so uncool that the only way to win was not to play

> In my mind I was so uncool that the only way to win was not to play

I mean, if you are thinking about it in those terms it sounds like it was pretty important.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#75

Post by rayiner »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends, and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out with others because most of my social time wa…

What do you mean by "social skills?" As an immigrant with parents who limited social activity with peers, growing up I felt handicapped by my social skills in some areas (particularly dating, which my parents discouraged up to the moment they started asking for grandchildren). Now I'm pushing 40 with three kids and a real job, I realized I had just learned a different set of social skills. Because I was always expected to converse with and participate in activities with adults, I had no trouble when it came to joining the workforce, interacting with bosses, etc. And whatever discomfort I had navigating the artificial social context of age-segregated school just didn't matter--it wasn't a valuable skill outside that unique context.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#77

Post by hackerlight »

mythrwy wrote: post #4
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

The argument about lack of socialization from failure to attend public school might have some basis. But thinking back, I came out of the public schools with some pretty anti social behaviors and attitudes that I picked up there. Being cool is so important at that age in that setting. I often wonder what life would have been like had I been taken out say, age 12 or 13 and given a more solid education to match my natu…

The socialization argument is nonsense. Schools as factory farms came first -- with no regard for socialization -- then the socialization argument was made later to rationalize it.

Forcing kids (by constructing their environment in such a way) to have only relationships with kids that are precisely the same age as them is weird. Some healthy relationships with people who are a few years older in positive. Older kids/people need to be embedded in the social circle as role models. You get less bullying and should get faster social development. Homeschooling done right is more similar to how kids developed socially in our ancestral past (all the way up to a few hundred years ago). It's also more similar to how kids develop in much of the world outside of the West where larger family units are more tight knit.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#78

Post by enkid »

mythrwy wrote: post #4
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

The argument about lack of socialization from failure to attend public school might have some basis. But thinking back, I came out of the public schools with some pretty anti social behaviors and attitudes that I picked up there. Being cool is so important at that age in that setting. I often wonder what life would have been like had I been taken out say, age 12 or 13 and given a more solid education to match my natu…

There is no and has never been any true evidence that home schooled kids are worse at socialization then the ones that go to a traditional school, at least as far as I can tell. It's a meme that people propagate because it is "common sense," but none of the studies I've looked at supports it.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#79

Post by camhart »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #2

We are in our ninth year of homeschooling. My wife and I attended private and public schools and grew up with typical biases against homeschooling, e.g. they lack social skills. When we got married, we always assumed we'd send our kids to traditional schools. What we learned, though, is that homeschooling has changed since we were in school. Back then, it was a niche, and the sort of parents who chose to homeschool u…

Just as a counterpoint... I was homeschooled from 2nd grade until sophomore year of high school. I played sports the entire time (was the captain of various teams), had plenty of friends, and was pretty social. Even still, I felt like my social skills were significantly stunted when compared to others my age. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable just hanging out with others because most of my social time wa…

Not feeling comfortable could be question of time. You get comfortable when you go from kindergarten to 12th grade with the same kids. You know them well, because you've been in classes with a lot of them for 6-7 hours / day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year.

As I typed the above paragraph out, it actually makes me question. Is that really growing social skills if they're always surrounded by the same kids? For example, I moved to a different state between 8th grade and the start of high school. That experience helped me to understand what it's like to not have friends, how long it takes to make friends (2-3+ years), and how to interact with a lot of peers you don't know and who don't know you.

It was interesting when I went to college, and I found other students who were nice, but never really interested in being your friend because they went to the same college as many of their high school friends. Or they grew up near the college and had all their high school friends nearby still. I guess this latter point isn't really social skills, but it is something that I learned to be aware of.

Re: For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching

#80

Post by rayiner »

cogman10 wrote: post #76

[flagged]

I think that's a lazy take. It's not the facts, it's the worldview. Socializing children into your moral and religious worldview is something that's widely recognized as a human right: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/... ("The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.").

There's no fact I would not discuss with my kids. But as someone from an Asian country, I'm becoming increasingly wary of how teachers talk about certain facts--specifically, from an individualist, humanist perspective. I want my kids to understand that they're a cog in a machine, rowing with many other people to move forward a society, and have myriad reciprocal obligations to care what other people need, what they think, to respect their feelings, to allow them to save face, etc. I don't want them to grow up to be "muh freedoms!" Americans. I think a lot of cultural minorities—which these days includes Christians with orthodox beliefs—are in the same boat.

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